INTERLUDE 9H: A RARE BREED

“Mund is dying and you know it. You feel the death-tension; you anticipate the death-throes; and more than anything else you wish to no longer exist in this state. Death itself is preferable because you think it will bring you relief. So in search of this death-comfort you will talk it all through with a loved one. Talk it through with a stranger, a priest or an enchanter. You will weep and moan and unburden yourself of all this unnecessary strain. Normalise the environment in which you dwell, the heart of the curse you helped create. Yet setting aside your responsibility will not absolve you of it. Do not talk it over! It is not over! Your loved one, your holy man, your magician – they themselves lie under the curse! They want you to be as them, complacent, body and mind in harmony with the destruction that is about to descend. Do not talk! Do not beg the sleeping to draw you back into that slumber! Awaken! Act upon the discomfort! That is why it exists: to tell you that the world in which you are enfleshed no longer exists in harmony with you! Either you or it must break. Do not let it be you.”

– from ‘Memories of Everseer’, collected 996 NE

He looked down from the rafters, hanging like a bat in the shadows, arms folded across his chest. He didn’t need claws to grab the roof’s old timbers. Hooking his toes over the support-beam was good enough; the thin wooden stake wedged in his boot next to his heel was nice and secure. He’d been here for almost an hour, and he’d settled himself quite comfortably.

Perhaps I’ll try resting like this come dawn, he mused. The sensation of blood rushing to the head was a completely different experience now, and not unpleasant in the slightest. It was almost, a little bit, in the tiniest way, similar to drinking blood. He felt mellow. More relaxed than usual. It made the waiting easier, he found.

Beneath him, target number one was waiting with his gang for target number two. There was no relaxing for the killers gathered in the lantern-light below; this much was evident in target number one’s listless pacing. When focussing, the vampire could identify every word the trafficker muttered under his breath – he could pick out every bead of sweat emerging on the criminal’s bald head with his nostrils, without even looking.

Ah… but he’d be an unappealing meal in any case.

That was one of the benefits of spending your existence hunting lowlife scum. So few of them were edible. And the more time he spent lurking around these slums by the docks, the more the memories faded. Succulent, well-bred women – they’d been his primary temptation, in the early days. Hells, such delicious fiends had been his downfall ever since he was a young man, long before he even became a creature of the night… He’d never forget the Lady In Grey, whose true name he’d never discovered, finding him there with the blood still on his hands and having her way with him in the quiet moonlight of the mansion’s courtyard. Such things were unthinkable, dreams of fascination – yet it had happened. He remembered her corseted bosom, trembling as she fully embraced the thrill, the danger –

He pulled his thoughts away. The reality of the thirst was such that he couldn’t afford a single moment of weakness. Even thinking about the trafficker’s repulsiveness had led his mind wandering back to the forbidden pathways, to that heaving brown bosom…

Every recollection had this new aspect. Desire had a second axis. Appetite became literal. Imagined kisses became bites and it was women like her, like the Lady In Grey, whose recklessness incensed him, compelled him.

She was never far from his thoughts, nor the dozens of other highborn women he’d bedded. Such was his penance, as he saw it – to recollect, and never revisit, despite the fact his vampiric nature would make tracking each of them down a doddle.

Am I a fool, to dream of celestial shores awaiting me beyond the Door?

Yet when he dreamt, the sparkling blue oceans beyond the white sand were always red, hell-oceans fed by the river of his rebirth.

Too many kills under my belt, he would think as he lay there, propelled by the bloody currents he now resented, reviled. Too many souls screaming around this place, sent here by my hand.

He could but try. Be the exception proving the rule. Be the human, trapped within the inhumanity. He couldn’t say he would never again feed, never again take a life. It was the knowledge of his weakness that gave him strength. That let him do what he had to do.

He’d tracked target number one easily enough, after catching the gang’s conversation on the warm breeze. Target number two was an unknown factor, but he’d be along presently to join the show. Tonight, target number one was making a ‘purchase’. Him and his gang were nervous, but not because they had an inkling of the undead assassin stalking them – if they had the faintest notion they’d have scattered to the winds instantly.

No. They were nervous because of the goods they were planning to procure. They were nervous because of the people they were getting in touch with, the connection they were making between themselves and true evil. The underworld wasn’t some monolithic entity. The assassin’s guild to which the vampire had once belonged was far from legal, but it was only one or two layers deep. The Magisterium knew that spending their resources in destroying such shady organisations was a futile endeavour. Two new assassin’s guilds had sprung up in its wake, each not a stone’s throw from Welderway, once the dust had settled following the whole Lodus ordeal. The same would be true of most such guilds. Thieves and killers for hire were one thing. Brothel-owners and grave-robbers. Traffickers in soft drugs, and even hard but ‘tolerated’ drugs like whitestick. These were reasonable evils. The watch would investigate, make arrests, execute or imprison the perpetrators… but it didn’t go further than that. There was no ideological war taking place. The watch’s resources were limited – perhaps they’d even been deliberately hamstrung. It was often the rich who stood to benefit the most from the existence of such organisations, in the end, wasn’t it?

But who was to say how deep the underworld went? Inkatra was wrecking lives in swathes and it’d forced the Magisterium into action, yet such reactions were hardly new – there had always been money to be made by trafficking in dark items: destruction-wands, glyph-breakers, cursed trinkets… If you spoke to the right people – or very very wrong people – you could even be put in touch with unscrupulous hireling-magicians, Maginox rejects with experience in illegal enchantments and enhancements…

And then, lower than all the rest, there were these:

People-traffickers.

There were the sounds for which he’d awaited, creeping in now on the edge of his consciousness. A soft clippety-clop. The creaking of wooden planks, old wheels complaining as they rolled on the surprisingly-dry dirt.

Target number two, or one of his crew, gave a coded knock. Just a series of light taps on the big ironbound door. The vampire observed with amusement how this little set of sounds threw the whole room below into disarray. They pointed to each other, mouthing instructions they dared not give voice for fear of being overheard by those outside, revealing their lack of confidence.

If they were professional at all, they really should’ve had a scout out there, the vampire mused. Or should’ve checked the rafters…

For one fascinating instant, his feedback-loop awareness was triggered and he looked to his right, suddenly certain he was about to spot someone else up here in the rafters with him. Instincts sent his gaze skittering, combing the shadows that were to him as good as sources of light. And the corner from which he sensed the attention of a stranger – it was empty, save for cobwebs and rat droppings.

Bemused at the way his intuitions were overcompensating for the idiocy of the gang, he returned his attention to the scene below. The bars and latches were lifted, the door was drawn open, and the second gang entered. They had a swagger to their motions that would’ve clued an observer in on the power dynamic even if they hadn’t just spent an hour and a half watching the first group’s squirming. Two of the new guys were built like oxen and they walked obnoxiously-close to the current occupants of the building, leering in the faces of the smaller men, forcing them to step back or get barged.

The vampire followed the conversation easily despite the low voices being used. He categorised the insights according to their relevance.

The sum being exchanged: thirteen plat. One real platinum disc and a whole load of gold and silver, counted out coin upon coin by a couple of target number two’s lackeys. A lot of money, to be sure, but for people? By law in Mund no man, woman or child could be sold – not alive, at any rate.

The ‘amount of product’… seven. Just ‘seven’.

The source of the cash: a lord, name unmentioned. The vampire banked the information. He would extract more soon.

And, most importantly, the total number of targets, both primary and secondary: eleven inside the building. Voices indicated three more outside with the wagon, beyond his sight.

Fourteen.

Right on the edge of his perceptions he could make out the heavy nasal breathing coming from gagged victims. The sounds didn’t crispen as he centred his awareness upon them, confirming to him that the captives were under a covering.

The soft clanking of chains as they shifted their hands, ankles…

The wet scents of absolute terror.

The vampire silently pulled himself upright, abandoning the bat-pose to crouch atop the beam. He would act, soon. Excitement started to fill him, almost as good as the memory of blood. When he exerted his abilities, he felt no boundaries on himself except those he enforced. The sensation of freedom was the most glorious thing he’d experienced, alive or dead.

Free the victims, he reminded himself. Free them. Nentheleme guide me.

The great goddess’s name didn’t hurt him when he thought it anymore. Perhaps Celestium wasn’t completely off the table after all – maybe he’d be able to say her name again, one day.

“Bring ’em in,” target two hissed once the coins had been counted and locked in a small chest.

At his words one minion exited, returning moments later leading a horse. On the heels of the tired animal came the creaking wagon.

Just a canvas covering them – they weren’t even seated. Tossed in the back of the cart like sacks of spuds and left lying piled atop one another. The chains bound not just wrist and ankle but throat. Blindfolds were wrapped about every set of eyes.

And as they were hoisted unceremoniously from their prone positions, thrust upright to stumble and stagger across the coarse dirt floor, the vampire stared in shock.

Children – three male and four female. Half of them were probably just about adults, older teenagers he wouldn’t hesitate to categorise as kids, whose katra-sweats left them shaking and glistening… while two of the youngest were wearing clothes damp only about the crotch. The blindfold of one little girl had slipped and her pleading, tear-filled eyes spoke louder than any of the terrified mumbles pouring through their gags.

“Wha’s ‘e want ’em for, anyways?” target number two asked.

“She,” target number one replied darkly. “We reckons it’s their blood. Drinks it, or washes ‘erself in it, yer know. They’s all untouched?”

Target number two gave a bland laugh. “As they gets, at least. Yer serious? Drinks it?”

The vampire tuned out the rest of the discussion. It was time to act.

The petrified teenagers were being herded by shoves and gestures into the corner of the room. That would at least keep them out of the way.

He stepped off the beam and had to wait for inertia to grip him, his undead nature granting him a generous grace period in which to change his mind, return to his perch. Finally, after what seemed like several moments, his flesh caught up with the world, permitting him to fall.

He landed catlike in their midst, crouching as his feet touched down to further muffle the soft sounds, presenting a smaller shape to any stray eyes that might’ve caught his motion.

Two of them. He knew it in the core of his being. Only two of them glimpsed him as he fell.

It didn’t matter. They’d all receive the same punishment.

In the early days he’d have just smashed the lantern and set to work, but he’d developed his current technique through trial and error. At first he’d made the mistake of killing his targets. That was too much like the old him. Nowadays if he killed, he felt no relief, no release. He’d been to the shadowland. He knew what death meant. After the first few kills and the depression that followed, he changed tactics.

Wounding them came with its own issues. Lacerations teased him when the criminal was left alive, oozing blood, enticing him with every pumping pulse. Even when he kept the injuries internal, he didn’t help anyone. For one week in Ismethara he’d exclusively inflicted spinal-cord damage on the scum he hunted, leaving them incapable of any further evil acts for the rest of their miserable lives. After realising the burden he’d placed on the watch, peering down from the rooftops as the poor guys struggled to heave several overweight scoundrels out of the apartment and down the stairs, he’d come up with his current solution.

He rose to his full height, which was considerably shorter than most of the non-kids in the building. His lavender gaze fell first on those who’d spotted him, but he quickly flitted about to take in the others, pre-empting all efforts to resist him or flee.

“Huddle up. Yes, my friends, in the middle. Right – better idea. Line up, that’s it. Lift up your favoured hand.”

He wasn’t an enchanter – he didn’t have that kind of control. No reading thoughts, other than recognising when another’s attention fell upon him. And no direct commanding, either. He couldn’t just tell this bunch of fools to start hopping on their left legs and expect them to actually follow through, not without additional persuasion. Yet he did have some measure of control. His mesmerising gaze, especially when he was feeling angry, cowed the weak of will. His very presence was itself an act of violence against all that was good in the world, every word he spoke an axe-stroke falling into the unprotected meat of their baby-fleshed minds. The encapsulating eyes he bore were less effective than Lethal’s had been that day… but from what he’d belatedly learned about his vampiric nature, that made sense. He was two generations further from the source, two generations weaker than Lodus had been.

Still – he’d worked hard to refine the ability, practising exerting his will over criminal scum whenever opportunity arose. Now, speaking to the two gangs, the vampiric suggestions worked their magic on them. They cast one another bewildered looks, but they lined up. The most worried-looking first, one by one they held out their right arms, and those with sleeves slid them up to their elbows – except target number two. He was a leftie.

“Excellent. Keep them held out. Now, stay here. Stay quiet, alright?”

“Alright,” one of the big beefy guys whispered in a concerned voice.

Trying not to snigger, the vampire stepped leisurely towards the corner where the captives had been gathered.

He felt nothing but his own freedom as he freed the children; no temptation; no hunger. He was within temptation, now. He was inside the hunger. Swallowed whole by the thirst. He could no longer fear it as some outside entity, no longer fear to be drawn to it. He’d accepted it, and he’d carried on regardless. Even the eldest of the four girls, who was perhaps seventeen and by far the most luscious of the lot, didn’t turn his eye. He saw only victims. Only those who needed his help.

He tore the last gag loose, snapped the chains with his bare hands, and with a smile that hid his teeth he nodded for them all to go.

Faltering at first and then with ever-increasing haste, they stumbled away to the door, half-running from him in the end. They said nothing, even their desperate and hopeful eyes barely casting a morsel of gratitude in his direction. He might’ve tried to hide the teeth, but the eyes and skin and hair were all markers of his difference. They might not have been able to say specifically that he was a vampire, but they knew at least, instinctively, that he was wrong. Likely they feared a trick, a trap to lure them from danger into something yet worse. And it wasn’t like he could blame them. He’d even doubted old Lethal at first…

Once they’d left he returned to the centre of the room where the two gangs were nervously awaiting him. If he hadn’t seen them arrive, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart; where before the dominance of the second group had been plain to see, now they all wore the same expressions, mouthed the same confused whispers.

“Well, folks,” said the vampire, coming to a halt in front of them. “This has been a most momentous evening for you all, I think. The young ones are gone. Could I have that small chest there? Ah, thanks, my friend.” Target number two had a dazed expression on his face as he nodded, and the vampire hefted the heavy little thing with a single finger wrapped about its handle. “Now,” he continued, swinging it so that it made a lovely jingling sound, “we need to have a chat.”

“Do we still ‘as to be quiet?” one asked, both respect and worry in his hoarse voice.

“Wha’s gonner ‘appen wi’ us?” another asked, more worried than the first.

“I’m going to scrunch your hands like fistfuls of leaves, I’m afraid.”

“Awwwwww.” They moaned in concert, like a bunch of children being told their square-day had been called off.

“I know, but it’s necessary. There’ll be no external bleeding, and I’ll take my time, minimise the internal bleeding too. We’re working primarily with the bone itself, here. The point is to make it too expensive to get healing. Katra’s just a bit too impermanent, unreliable, when it comes to these things, isn’t it? Hands are really rather complicated, don’t you know?”

“But how’m…” one of them began in a complaining voice, “how’m I gonna –”

“Exactly,” the vampire hissed, glowering, and even the beefiest of the big guys shivered. It was as though he’d transplanted the expressions of the captive children onto their faces. “Exactly,” he went on more softly. “You won’t be able to do anything, really. And if I ever come across someone doing something… naughty… whose hands I’ve already crushed, well… Only the eyes are more expensive, so I’m informed. Or the genitals.”

He didn’t have to glower or hiss – they all blenched.

“You – number two. Your name?”

Target number two pointed at his chin with his thumb, still dutifully holding out his left hand.

The vampire nodded and the man stammered.

“Xa-Xalto.”

“Xalto…?”

“Xalto Redson.”

“Very good, Mr. Redson. I’m Dirk. Step forwards. That’s it – take my hand. Oh, come now, don’t be nervous. We’re all friends here, right?”

He looked about. There was a general murmur of agreement.

“Now – that’s it. Good. Hush now. Don’t look at me like that. Tell me.

“Who by the Five is trafficking people?”

* * *

At first he thought the hideout used by the city’s most infamous crime-boss was easy to find. Interrogating a few lowlifes was enough to give him a pretty firm mental map of the location and, though the orders hadn’t come from Zandrina herself, he had little doubt he’d find the pit from which she conducted her empire within minutes of his arrival. Surely the watch and even the Magisterium would know where to go to trap Zandrina, and the notion it was all an inside job crossed his mind more than once. Why else would she have survived so long?

It was only after invading her base and conducting further ‘inquiries’ that he came to an understanding that approximated truth.

He entered the secret door at the back of Fastman’s Docks, situated just where Xalto Redson told him he’d find it. Moving some old wooden slats aside he revealed a dark hole, like any of a hundred other empty grooves in the bare rock of this stretch of the riverbank. His fabulous eyesight easily picked out the fold in the stone in front of him disguising the entry. He strode purposefully into the gloom, and soon he was inside the twisting tunnels.

The vampire spent considerable effort moving around the hidden base without drawing attention to himself, his cowl pulled low, the fake limp and bent back making a man of his small stature entirely unthreatening to behold. It didn’t take long before he realised the extent of the hidden warrens he walked. The people he passed weren’t guards, or employees. These were customers, whole communities of them, many sleeping in large groups in the stony corners, rags for their pillows. Mothers cackled, mouths full of wane, as innocent infants suckled on their bare breasts. Fathers sang their daughters to sleep with bawdy songs designed for the ears of drunkards, not caring about or even noticing the slow-burning sparks of spite in their children’s eyes. There were few rats to be seen here beyond those already skewered, awaiting their turn on the firepit. A few times he spotted older kids returning to their parents with stolen trinkets in their hands, trading them for food – and as the youngsters hunkered down to eat and play and sleep, the adults went to their dealers.

Within five minutes he’d seen over two hundred different people down here, and he was just getting started.

Almost half of the grown-ups were in a drug-addled state, along with a fair proportion of those he thought were younger than fifteen. Many of those sitting in a stupor would simply be awaiting their next hit, but others were deep in the katra-haze, taking lonesome sojourns into the past or the future, or to far-flung lands. The adolescents in particular were using their magic in a flashier way, any number of random effects bursting out into being. Even as he passed by he saw one teenage girl choke to death; it seemed she’d increased the size of her tongue, probably wanting to show off to the gang of peers who were now gathered about her corpse with indolent, dour expressions on their faces. A friendless mute sat alone with a black-toothed grin on his face, staring into the depths of a globe of clear water that shimmered in his hands. Two scrawny, filthy men were fighting one another by playing at being sorcerers – the crowd jeered and cheered as the small squads of imps they’d managed to summon went rolling over one another, furious balls of claws and tails and wings.

Dirk knew he had to be careful, but he’d ran into enough katra-heads to understand few possessed the right magic to detect his true nature. It required the sorcerer’s-sight, a trick too subtle for the drug-addicts and, frankly, useless to them ninety-nine percent of the time. The eldritches they summoned would’ve been far more concerning, should they have been used as guards rather than for a drug-head’s amusement. He followed the flow of the foot-traffic to the dealers then, when no one was looking, quietly climbed to the ceiling. The illumination in here was poor, open cooking-fires filling the air with smoke; even with the radiance of stray spells here and there, Dirk felt safe enough on the roof of the tunnel.

It was a labyrinth. Only magic could’ve tunnelled-out these passageways, especially since it seemed they’d been created without alerting those working and living just ten yards overhead. Vents in the ceilings let the smoke of the cooking-fires seep up and out – clearly they’d been planned, the katra-wizards directed by a cunning architect. How had she achieved all this? How had she achieved this without getting caught?

It was only after finding the one they were calling the ‘boss-man’, a shrewd-looking older fellow in a business-suit, that Dirk started to get with the picture. This man was no crime-lord. He was a pen-pusher, bending over his desk replete with piles of paperwork, a looking-glass suspended on a small crane in front of his nose.

This wasn’t a business. It was a… a franchise.

“Three months,” he man croaked breathlessly when Dirk came to sit opposite him. “Three months, I last seen ‘er. I – I’m sorry, if you think you was suppos’ ter meet ‘er ‘ere.”

He took the times and dates of the next deliveries and went on his way, slinking across the uneven surfaces of the ceilings. Dirk would return to punish the man but he had to let the natural course of events play itself out first. Wouldn’t do to go spooking people.

The next shipment wasn’t a big one. The large weekly drop-off that would arrive by barge was due on Twoday night, and Dirk briefly considered waiting a few extra days, but when he arose from the red waters on Fullday evening all the fire and thrill of excitement was upon him – and he knew it was time.

The Fullday katra delivery-guys wouldn’t even need to come to the entrance behind the dock, as hidden as it was. They dropped product off in a house, linked to the tunnels through its foundation. Offshoots of katra-gangs owned the houses, or had at least claimed them for their own, which was much the same thing in slums like these. Dirk spent almost six hours in the company of nineteen idiot drop-heads, not one over the age of twenty, and the vampire was within five minutes of opening all their throats just for the pleasure of it when the lads showed up.

It was too late – too early – to follow them. He asked them very politely for directions to their base then, realising how rapidly dawn was approaching, he withdrew to a sewer to brood before the fatal lethargy stole over him.

There was always the next night.

* * *

Four nights, four hidden bases and forty-one crushed hands later, he was still no closer to his goal. The despair didn’t become real until he saw a couple of Xalto Redson’s captive teenagers again. They were back on the Rivertown streets, kicking-in a homeless man to steal his beggar’s bag, his last meagre coins taken to fuel their addictions.

Dirk caught up with them, gave them the gaze, and let them off with busted thumbs. He returned the small sack of coppers to the beggar but the poor man just shrank back, covering his bruised flesh and mumbling in fear, his eyes shining in the moonlight.

Feeling sick, Dirk dropped the sack at the man’s feet then dropped a few of his own coins on top. It didn’t make him feel any better. He ascended to the nearest roof and made his way across the roadways towards the river, finally stopping once the Greyflood was in sight. Sitting on the ledge atop an apartment-block, he listened to the seething hiss of the water as it snaked south-east, glistening darkly as it went, hiding any number of secrets in the blackness beneath its scaly moonlit surfaces. The wind tugged at his hair, pulling it into his eyes, sending it tickling across his face – he drew the luminous strands behind his ears, frustrated by their intrusion upon his brooding.

What was the point of any of it? Why had he freed those kids? Just so that they could take on the evil they’d been exposed to – wear it as a coat, as a suit of armour to protect them, protecting the delicate sections of their minds from future attack…? But how long before it consumed them? How long before they went from good kids replicating the evil they saw and suffered through, to evil people in their own right?

He knew the answer. No time at all. The good in them, and the evil – it couldn’t be separated. It could be found only in the eye of the beholder. The beggar they’d beaten didn’t see the other side, and the moment his bruises healed he’d have the same evil in him. Maybe he’d beat another homeless man, steal his sack. Pay it forward. Breed the wickedness. Show the dark gods the worship, the endless enduring celebration of selfishness they so craved.

There was no way around it. No higher goal or purpose. And it wasn’t like this was new to him. When he’d been a nihilistic teenager, just entering his chosen profession, he’d promised himself he’d one day be a true worshipper of Yane, a blade for the Bladed One. But that phase only lasted a couple of years. The comfort of luxuries earned by his pay soon brought complacency, and he looked back on his past self as a naive wannabe, the inflexible maturity of his former beliefs itself a sign of immaturity, a longing for something. A longing for belonging. As he grew up he settled for thinking he’d turn it around some day, square his debts with the gods… Plenty of killers had to end up in the heavens, right? He and Lethal never offed any kids, never took the jobs that would buy you a one-way wagon-ride to hell. There was always another tomorrow. Another chance to change his ways, or, better, discover the lens through which he could view his history and make it pristine – the story of a hero, doing his best to make his way in the world…

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

But now here he was, a creature marked by Vaahn. He knew nothing of his world. Over the last few nights he’d witnessed more human misery, met more abominable wretches, than he had in the last few years. There were more hives of abject awfulness in the city than he’d ever imagined. It was as though he’d only opened his eyes for the first time. And now it was so much harder to go back to sleep. To pretend it wasn’t real. To feign belief in a crystal ball through he could review existence and find it good. Each time the despair found him it was that much harder to light the candle inside him that would drive away the darkness. The wick withered. The wax pooled. The flint fractured. The steel rusted.

The desire to live – it had to be refreshed. The spark had to come, again and again and again. But what if the spark refused to appear? What if he came back to himself one evening and the light was gone out forever?

He knew what it meant. The soul became mixed, blue skies with red, until all he saw was tinted with that ever-present purple malevolence.

He watched the river slithering by, listened to the whispers of water against the stony banks as they accumulated into vast, incoherent roars… and he knew that he was lost.

Then he span to his feet, boots grinding the roof-tiles, whirling to face his observer –

There was nothing. No one.

He was alone, with the wind and the river and the darkness.

Until the dawn.

* * *

“Wow. You’re a maudlin one, aren’t you?”

He barely felt her attention fall upon him before her voice accosted him. The brilliance of the sun kept him from his sleep, but it must’ve dulled his senses.

Or she’s magic.

He couldn’t turn his head, or even his eyes. He stared at the river, unblinking. He was prevented from inhaling her fragrance, identifying her by scent.

Who is it?

“Do you have any idea how dangerous this is for you? By afternoon the people who spotted you sitting up here in the morning will realise something funny’s going on. You’re lucky the roof’s so high they can’t pick out your features or you’d already be a gonner, you know. The kids down there already started a rumour that a wizard’s left a weird gargoyle up on the roof during the night and if they come take a look and the watch get called, they won’t hesitate to end you. You’re not immortal. It only takes a well-placed stick. But then, I guess you know all this already, don’t you, Dirk Danten?”

Zandrina? One of her agents? The voice coming from just over his shoulder was well-spoken but he had a hard time categorising it as highborn – it was delicate, like that of a young girl, but somehow exotic and unnatural, unaccented.

“My Mistress would love to meet you. I’ve had my eye on you a while now. Your thirst – how you’ve sublimated your aggressive instincts to such a degree, I can’t quite fathom, I must admit. If she’s going to join with a higher-undead, you’re going to be just perfect.”

The desire to move had never been stronger. He had to get away from here, away from his hidden interrogator. The candle in his mind flooded him with heat but the vampire flesh was as cold and unmoving as stone.

Join with him? How long would that last, with inkatra supplying the magic? He could only imagine that if she was willing to try it, Zandrina would’ve had underlings test it thoroughly first.

Then his interrogator came into view, sliding effortlessly in front of his eyes in spite of the hundred-foot drop beneath her – and the strange minuteness of her voice suddenly made so much more sense.

Not a woman. Not even a girl.

A fairy.

She was no taller than his hand was long. She had straw-blonde pigtails and a cunning, knowing expression on her miniature pristine features. Her short dress was the exact same shade of blue as the sky before which she hovered, its skirts billowing gently in time with the slow beating of her diaphanous wings.

“I know, it’s worrying at first, but I’d never joined with anyone before till her and believe me, it really helps. I know what you need right now. Don’t worry – I won’t bring her to you while you’re like this. You need vision, Dirk. You need perspective. And, most of all, you need help. All heroes do.”

Help?

Did his eyes transmit the message? He could have forgiven himself for believing it, when she flitted back out of sight, coming to rest her tiny shoes on his shoulder so that she could whisper directly into his ear.

“You want to catch Zandrina too, right?”

* * *

The day waxed and waned, and with the dying of the light his strength came back to him. Shuddering to his feet, he felt the astonished gazes of the few who’d continued to stare at the motionless man on the edge of the roof – felt the gazes of those they called to their sides, pointing to him, exclaiming.

The fairy had been right. He was damned lucky. But with every cursory glance, every protracted stare, the vampire felt the hand of fate at work. Each opportunity for someone to come and investigate his presence – every single look was a chance the authorities would be informed, and they’d attend, complete the suicide he hadn’t the will to carry out for himself –

Each lost opportunity was a reassurance, a reminder:

The gods of light work to save us all.

Perhaps the shadows of the city were too thick for divine eyes to pierce. Perhaps they required an agent – he’d been chosen to be their champion. It wasn’t Yane that guided his actions – it was Yune.

He set off, moving across the city towards this fateful meeting with his saviour.

There was just one thing troubling him: why it had to be a female archmage. Hadn’t enough happened to him already? Did the gods have to toy with him in this way? He’d heard of plenty of fiction written by teenage girls that revolved around the notion of ‘fixing a vampire’, featuring characters who were capable of making the fearsome, intoxicating creature into a besotted lap-dog through the pure power of their unrelenting feminine wiles. There was even some non-fiction in the same vein floating about, some of it written by those same girls of a generation ago, advanced now in age and intellect if not in wisdom. The sorceries to be used for capturing the will of a vampire had re-entered popular culture through the Thorn-Kiss’d Chronicles trilogy almost fifty years ago, and from what he understood the rituals described therein were pretty accurate to the magical texts. If vampires were a more-common sight in Mund, he’d have had enemies equipped with enslavement spells around every corner, no doubt. As it was vampiric studies remained a niche within a niche. He’d not had to worry about suitors robbing him of his ability to refuse, not once in all the months since he died and was reborn.

This would be different. The person he was going to meet tonight didn’t just have the inherent capability to subdue his will, command his comings and goings – she was going to do it to him. He would enter her presence, and that would be it. All his options would be drained right out of him. Even escape would evaporate from his mind. Retreat was a choice he’d have to make right now, in the before.

Yet he moved forwards towards his goal. The fairy had tracked him down more than once – of that he was certain. And if he didn’t go willingly, she’d bring the sorceress to him next time. Yes, of course. There would be no pretence of decision, if he let it come to that. There would be only submission. Obedience.

Thus did Dirk make all his excuses to himself, knowing all the while that it was the subtle insinuation hidden behind the fairy’s words that compelled him on towards this encounter. The notion he could lose himself. The loss of responsibility it implied. Whether it be a sorceress of fierce and fiery aspect or some bloated, boil-ridden wench, a toothless old crone – he could submit himself before such a creature, if it gave him what he craved. Freedom, not to act, but to be absolved. The freedom to act without the burden of paying for the consequences. He had to hope – hope that the fairy was right.

Just please – please, not some idiot girl with a penchant for dangerous creatures.

He found the correct alleyway in Undernight not an hour past dusk: a narrow opening between a locksmith’s workshop and a hat-maker’s. A quick perusal from the rooftops told him that this wasn’t one of the refuse-choked alleys housing beggars and rivers of filth – it’d been a while since he’d last frequented Oldtown, and the change of scenery was disorienting. Mund was so vast, it was almost like it contained seven or eight different cities; you could go half an hour in one direction and the people were completely different. The shop-fronts and alleys changed… the scents, the sounds… Even the very mood on the air was transformed; half-way up the street a music-group were jamming with lutes and guitars, the notes of their carefree tunes drifting out of an open window to entertain (or irritate) the neighbours.

No, there was no scum staining this stony ground – there were no scumbags loitering at the bends in this alley. Just some old crates here and there, half of them stuffed with trash that would be burnt or tossed in the river. He followed the narrow space from above for about thirty seconds and then, when his eyes picked out the stranger awaiting him, he halted.

A small white mask with red lips and purple trails that arced like eye-shadow above the eye-slits.

Her gaze found him at the exact same moment his found her, and the pain throbbed through him – it was like being hit by something big, right in the centre of the torso. Not big like a hammer – big like a ship’s anchor, swinging with full force from a great height.

He groaned, swooning, and would’ve reeled right off the roof if not for the vampiric reflexes pinning the soles of his boots to the tiles. It was all he could do to rip his eyes away from the archmage’s masked face, look down at the cobbles beneath her feet.

Thankfully the agony swiftly receded, and he had a moment in which to take note of the sorceress’s demeanour. She was sitting atop one of the taller crates, swinging her legs one after the other out of some perverse excitement.

What was more – she was positively tiny. The size of a four-year-old, tops.

“Yoohoo!” the gnome called, waving a hand. “Down here!”

Dirk, my old mate, he heard Lodus’s voice inside his head, this is one hell of a mistake you’re making.

He disregarded the paranoid instincts, and drifted carefully to the alley floor. She cooed in appreciation.

“Where’s your friend?” he asked, trying to sound casual, glancing about at the modest amount of detritus. “I can feel her looking at me.”

“Rez? Oh, come out of there, Rez. I don’t know what you think you’re playing at.”

The fairy came floating down from a grate in the side of the building. “I had to check he wasn’t being followed,” she said, a trifle defensively.

“I’m quite capable of that,” he said, smiling up at her with his fangs exposed.

“Not the same way as me.” The fairy in the blue dress sounded highborn now, using that smug, peremptory tone as she sailed down across him towards her mistress. “You have a range, limited by physical senses.”

“Well?” he asked.

She frowned. “Well what?”

“Well – was I being followed?”

The fairy made an affronted sound, half tut and half groan; Dirk smiled again, then checked himself as he almost met the sorceress’s eyes once more.

The archmage gestured and he could tell without looking directly that Rez descended straight into the sleeve trailing off the gnome’s arm. There would’ve been enough space inside a human’s sleeve to hide the fairy, but not in the gnome’s. That wasn’t what was going on here.

They’d just joined, he was fairly sure.

He’d heard of it before, of course, but it was another thing entirely to see it happen in front of you, just like that.

“So you’re Dirk Danten,” the gnome said in a somewhat-awed voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“From Rez?”

He saw her nodding out of the corner of his eye.

“She’s handy, that one, no denying it.” The gnome sounded like she was smiling behind the mask. “You walked right through my shields, just like she said you would – not one bit of resistance. So… Dirk Danten…”

He could hardly hide his nervousness – and in the face of this, a gnome! Of all the demeaning situations in which to find himself…

“So… Zandrina?”

“No no no!” she snapped. “That’s where you’re supposed to ask who I am!”

“I… Sorry. Who, then? Who are you?”

As though the outburst just moments earlier had never happened, she went on in her silky voice: “I thought you’d never ask, Dirk Danten. I…” She paused, apparently for dramatic effect. “… I am Necrogirl.”

He had no idea what reaction she expected, other than the powerful intuition that if he were to laugh she’d whittle him right down to the bone.

“Amazing,” he said.

He could hear the dryness in his own voice, but she seemed not to notice – his response only fuelled her intensity.

“Oh, thank the gods,” she breathed. “I was so nervous, you know, saying it for the first time. I was going to go with Necrognome, for a while, you know – Rez said it’s a cleverer name, but I just like it. Necrogirl. Necrogirl!”

The arch-sorcerer flourished her hand, punctuating her repetitions with little waves as though she stood before an adoring crowd.

“Anyway. Yes. Zandrina…” The young gnome seemed to collect herself, at least a little. “You hate her too? You… You’d be willing to submit to me? To get a chance at her?”

“I don’t hate her,” Dirk mumbled. “I hate what she’s doing, I guess. I just… It’s what Rez said.”

“What did she say?”

I came here because I need vision. Perspective.

“I’m not here because I need help to be a hero,” he said. “She got that bit wrong, but I do need help. I need help just to be.”

She removed the mask. Her childlike head was host to eyes that were far older than he’d expected.

He met those eyes and dissolved.

“Belong to me.”

“I belong to you, Mistress.”

There was a kind of release that he’d never been able to anticipate, like he’d opened a hole in his chest and just let everything inside flow out. It was a loss, but it was a gain, the reward perfectly commensurate with the sacrifice. Weightlessness came over his thoughts, the eldritch soul suddenly overshadowed, plunged into a warm stasis. Even the words he spoke in response weren’t his – even though it was his mind and tongue that formed them, they belonged only to her. It was by her will that he spoke –

By her will that he continued to feign life, cling to the shores of this material plane that didn’t want him.

He smiled, all his worries melting away.

The fairy had been right.

* * *

Being joined – it was the best and worst thing he could’ve ever imagined. The power of the arch-sorceress suffused him, enriching him, loaning him its strength somehow. It was like a warm bath on a cold night – not that it was cold in Mund at the moment. He could, so long as she permitted it, experience her tactile sensations. He knew the weather was balmy; he could feel the sweat trickling down his gnomish mistress’s back as a distant little tingle, almost as though it was his own spine. But it wasn’t. This wasn’t a merging of flesh, but of souls. It was his soul’s coldness that was warmed. He wasn’t really real – the fact that his seemingly-physical body could turn into nothingness at her touch proved it. He didn’t belong in Materium anymore. He was just a shadow of his spirit, cast onto the material plane by a twist of fate. Nethernum was his home now.

Not that he got to spend much time there. The red river that followed him wherever he went was much more manageable now that he had the reassuring sheath of power about him, and he almost enjoyed floating atop its churning surface, basking in the ochre light of the strange-faced moons. But she needed more than the abilities she could draw from him. She needed his strong arm, and, worse, his advice.

Being awake inside her was bad enough when she was going off on an internal tangent, but it was all the more surreal when Rez was talking – even worse when the two of them conversed without his involvement. It was hard enough getting used to an eyeline that was three feet off the ground, never mind the inner landscape echoing with two argumentative voices, neither of which belonged to him.

“I don’t trust her,” the fairy whined. “I don’t know what it is. There’s just – there’s something about her.”

“Ironvine’s too tough a nut for you to crack?” Necrogirl’s mental voice had an edge of amusement to it.

“Something dark happened to her.” Rez sounded positively moody. “She isn’t normal.”

“Who is? Don’t you dare say –“

“Even you’re not insane, Necrogirl.”

“Insane?”

“Or something like it. I don’t know. I’m not an enchanter, am I?”

Dirk carefully cleared his throat; he wasn’t sure whether the sound came across properly in the psychic space they all shared within the arch-sorcerer’s mind, but he always did it all the same.

“Ahem… I would say it’s Timesnatcher who seems like the crazy one.”

Necrogirl nodded her head slightly in agreement with his words as she strolled through the night. “Why did he say to stop going after the katra gangs? Doomspeaker looked confused, did you see? She literally tipped her head over to communicate it to the rest of us, didn’t she?”

Rez gave a noncommittal “hmm”.

The archmage continued: “Maybe all that stuff Everseer went on about – Lovebright, and the dragons – maybe it was true! Maybe it – maybe it got to him.”

Necrogirl seemed excited by the prospect of dragons and insane arch-diviners more than she was frightened. Dirk didn’t quite know how to react. He admired his mistress’s resolve, of course, but the wilfulness, the lack of concern with which she would throw herself into peril – it both troubled and enticed him.

“I always thought he’d seem saner,” Rez admitted. “He’s Timesnatcher. I wonder…”

“What?”

“Oh, just those rumours about Nightfell. What if she’s the one who’s really behind it? She didn’t show up. Again. And Zandrina’s impossible. I’d have more luck –”

Necrogirl shook her head now. “You’re not going out looking for an arch-diviner, Rez, especially not one like her. I forbid it.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Rez gave the automatic response in a gloomy voice.

“Now, if Ironvine says there’s something coming worse than dragons, I’m inclined to believe her. Whether or not you think she’s normal. Whether or not Timesnatcher’s the crazier one.”

“I’m not saying Ironvine’s wrong,” Rez protested instantly. “I’m saying –“

“You don’t trust her,” Mistress interrupted softly.

“Yes!”

Mistress sighed, drawing on the essence of one of the ghosts held silently within her to float up towards the rooftops. Of all things, Dirk’s essence seemed only to loan her the encapsulating purple stare – a rarity, Rez had said, though how the fairy might’ve known he had no notion. Necrogirl obtained no speed, no strength, no weightlessness from their joining. She’d had to find other eldritches to help her get around the city and for all that she’d implied she didn’t mind, Dirk couldn’t help feeling that he’d somehow disappointed her.

Now it was Rez’s turn to feel the sting of that shame.

“I don’t care what you think, Rez – I’m going to contact Doomspeaker tomorrow. We aren’t giving up on Zandrina.

“Not until she’s dead, her soul my prisoner.”

There were times when it was easy to forget that Necrogirl was an archmage wielding a vast measure of power over death itself – when he could think she was just a middle-aged gnome-lady dressing up and pretending at being a champion –

Then she thought things like that, and the intonation of her psychic voice was a dreadful thing to hear, lashing at Dirk’s unprotected consciousness. The reality of Ereta’s life, which he’d gathered together out of a thousand fragments to form a disjointed, demented mirror…

The loss of her two sons – one to the drug, the other to those who peddled it –

A year spent doing nothing, nothing but holding onto their ghosts, until the fairy came to save Ereta from herself –

And yes, then he was reminded of her true nature. What she was. What she’d been. What she’d become. But as much as it made him want to shiver, he was her creature. Where she went, he would follow, and if she asked him to drain every last drop of Zandrina’s blood he knew he would do it, knowing only what had been asked of him.

Not that he expected to enjoy it, of course.

Of course.

* * *

“Dirk! Dirk, I need you!”

Swirling amethyst energies coiled about him even as he floated on the bloody river; he tried to sit up on its crimson-black surface, feeling the alarm of his mistress like it was his own, but the instinctive motion was lost in dimensional transit – she separated from him even as she spoke to him, hurling him out like a living weapon into the faces of her foes, and it was all he could do to find his feet on the broken cobbles beneath him.

The cacophony of the Bells drenched him, reverberating within his skull. The battle-cries of the bestial demons, the screams of their victims, the hideous laughter of scores of imps –

Lightning stuttered across the sky in the very moment he was rebirthed, thunder booming instantly upon its heels.

He didn’t even know where he was, what was happening – but he was fighting.

The urge to guard his mistress from harm was paramount in his hierarchy of instincts – right by the spot in which he arrived there was a cohort of dog-men, targeting her with a volley of hurled missiles, and he didn’t think or look or listen.

Fingers gouged clean through demon-meat, splashing the cobbles with not just blood but great lumps of shredded flesh. The dog-faces howled. He kicked one of them in the jaw, mid-howl, shattering it into a rain of brain and tooth; the force of the blow lifted its whole body spinning into the air, pivoting around the empty shell of a skull.

There was a second in which he could get his bearings before the next urgency overcame him, before the next series of actions crystallised in his intuitive centre.

They were in Oldtown. On one side of the street there was a row of extremely expensive-looking old stone houses; facing it across the broad roadway was a tourist-trap, a zone of empty mausoleums surrounded by the crumbling remnants of ancient walls. The whole area was overrun. Two, three hundred demons. Less than a dozen defenders. The number of living mortals within sensory range was diminishing rapidly. Heartbeats, heartbeats cutting off –

More dog-men, not made of meat this time. Jackals that walked on their hind legs, wielding scimitars and axes of the same glistening dark glass that comprised their bodies. He swooshed inside their clumsy swings and used both palms to snap their necks, one by one twisting their scintillating bestial heads off their shoulders.

Dirk couldn’t see sorcerous forces when he was out like this, separated from his host, and he didn’t like it – he was incapable of telling at a glance whether her defences were strong or about to buckle. How could he be expected to properly protect her when he was blind like this?

Not that it was her fault, exactly, though it would’ve been nice if she’d planned ahead a little. She hadn’t had chance to bestow him with her mark, he supposed.

It was only then that he fully realised what he was seeing – what the lines of light staining the horizon represented –

“Mistress!” he cried across the roadway to her. “Mistress, is it day?”

Necrogirl didn’t answer – she was fighting a black-iron minotaur with a burning warhammer clasped in its huge metal fist, darting out of its range as it sprang to and fro after her, rending the cobbles to rubble in its wake. The flashing green spear in her own hand extended again and again, stretching twenty, thirty feet across the space to strike at its horns, snout, eyes.

A group of magisters were making a last stand around a roadside tree, protecting a small number of women and children within their circle – one of them overheard his question and he sensed as the magister’s attention fell upon him.

“It is indeed, vampire!” the red-robed wizard cried. “Now keep killing!”

The wizard aimed a wand – a gale of frozen wind repulsed a cloud of fist-sized hornets that was descending at the ring of magisters.

“I don’t work for you,” Dirk grumbled as he went back to his task, peeling monsters away from his mistress’s tail so that she could duel the huge demon without interruption.

How could he be here, if it was day? He should’ve been paralysed, storm or no storm. It did look like a particularly vile storm, he had to admit, looking up at it properly for the first time. The sky wasn’t just grey, overcast – it was near pitch-black, and to ordinary eyes he doubted the clouds themselves were properly visible as they were to him. He could forgive himself for assuming at first that it was night-time, given that he could dropping move.

A yelp from behind him; Dirk whirled about, scanning for priority targets, and saw as the wizard’s wand was expended. A renewed swarm of giant hornets struck at the magisters’ shielding, halted just above their heads. The vampire spotted the sorcerer of the group frantically gesturing, tossing handfuls of sand sloppily as he incanted a spell.

A quick glance told him his mistress’s situation hadn’t changed, but there were fewer enemies in the area now. Somehow, they were winning. Nothing nearby called for his attention.

Feeling a little gloating smile form on his lips, Dirk aimed himself at the magisters and then sped their way.

It was a simple thing for one with his particular abilities, to leap high and catch the hornets one by one, de-wing them like snatching leaves off branches. With the wet pitter-patter of rotten apples, the infernal insects plummeted. The wizard-magister gave a savage “hah!” under his breath and stalked outside the wards to stamp on the critters as they landed, every last one crushed to a red mess beneath the heel of his boot. He even flashed the vampire a vindictive, thankful grin, which Dirk returned.

The wizard’s grin became a scowl; Dirk remembered his teeth, his place, as an eldritch. The man didn’t want to make friends with the likes of him. The man was human. He was alive. Dirk – Dirk was just a shadow…

“Rez!”

Dirk span back to watch just as the fairy separated from the arch-sorceress. Perplexity ruled him. What he was seeing shouldn’t have been possible – it cried out, an aching chord, from the deepest wellsprings of his existence as an eldritch –

She leaves Mistress, against Mistress’s will.

“Leave it!” Rez spat, pirouetting lazily in the air as she rose up towards the sky. “I’m sorry – I am, but this isn’t going anywhere. You – you aren’t going anywhere, Ereta. It’s too late. Better that you die now. Goodbye.”

Green fire consumed the fairy, and then she was gone.

If there were shields surrounding Necrogirl before, they’d been ripped apart. The minotaur lunged at her with its weapon, missing her by mere inches as she skittered back. The fury of its blow seemed to disorient her even as it missed, the blazing head of the hammer whipping her about, making her stagger and stumble on the air.

She didn’t recover in time. Dirk watched on in horror as the minotaur took another step laid hold of his mistress with its hand.

It was twice his height and a hundred times his weight – he had no idea what he could do but he had to try. He flitted to the archmage’s side, hurling himself onto the arm of the demon, trying to yank it away from her.

Iron barbs the length of fingers slid inside him, dozens of them piercing him. All his strength, all his determination – it availed him naught.

She’ll be okay – she’s a ghost – she’s –

The first time the black minotaur clutched at her, its tremendous fingers fell cleanly through her edges, her ghostly defences protecting her from its grasp. But it brought the warhammer up, swinging the coruscating head of the weapon through her body before she could put more distance between them, and at its touch she seemed to wilt despite the ghost-essence. Its next attempt proved more successful, drawing her towards it, distorting her, like an ink painting floating on the surface of a still pool suddenly stretched, rippling.

The cessation of her screaming was somehow worse to hear than the screaming itself – there was a strangled little bleat as it cut off, a high-pitched whine of surrender, and Dirk was freed.

He felt the pull of the shadowland, requesting his return, as if compelling him to help usher his former mistress into her new existence as a spirit. For just a single instant he felt the blood splash against his back, the pull of the relentless river that wanted to claim him for its own once more. But he had taken enough from Necrogirl that he found he could resist, if he so wished, and he did. In regaining his freedom he’d lost something. He needed to find a new anchor. He couldn’t be adrift in that place again. Not yet. Not like this.

He shook his head, coming back to himself, focussing on the present, the material reality that struggled to elude him.

The minotaur still wasn’t prioritising him. Dirk’s former mistress was just a nethernal slop fused to its iron fist, and the demon struggled to flick the blurred body-parts from its spike-coated hand, her remnants clinging to it like a puddle of glue. Dirk was flung off merely as a side-effect.

For all that the vampire still respected her, still felt gratitude for her and everything she’d done to help centre him… he instantly recognised his former passion as a trait of the enslaved eldritch he’d become in her service. He respected her, but he didn’t adore her.

He abandoned her and her cause without much dismay, stumbling away from the minotaur before it could recognise him as a foe worth dealing with. He’d suffered wounds from the creature’s spikes as he’d tried to wrestle with it, but thankfully they weren’t corrosive, the injuries narrow and swiftly-healing. He let his instincts take control, propelling him onto one of the roofs overlooking the street. Dirk cast a single backwards glance at the magisters whose exclamations of panic were only now beginning to rise, recognising that the nascent champion was defeated, dead – the archmage’s opponent now free to hurl itself against their wards.

He closed his eyes, fingering his wounds absent-mindedly. He was regenerating just fine, and he was about to depart – he was going to depart – it was day, he was able to walk around in the day, and he didn’t care if there was an Incursion, he didn’t care if it was some kind of eternal, oppressive darkness that was going to swallow the world –

The lightning roared. The wind screamed like a cat. The footfalls of the hulking demon shook the ground, vibrations he could feel even up here.

Despite himself he cast the petrified magisters a second glance, then a third.

And, with a sigh, dropped back to the street.

He could at least save some of the civilians they were protecting before the force-fields fell.

* * *

It was six hours later that he spotted one of his kind, slinking over the rubble with blood down his chin. The stranger was similar in appearance to Dirk – the same pallor of skin and hair, same glowing eyes, same Mundic features – but he was taller and broad-shouldered. He was clad in sandals, loose beige trousers, and a long-sleeved bluescale tunic that was belted with a coil of rope about the waist. A few day’s growth of facial hair had been immortalised on his cheeks and neck, flecked the same silver shade as his head-hair, transforming a scruffy bit of beard into a scintillating fashion choice.

The bond of kinship Dirk felt evaporated as quickly as it had won him over.

Another of my brothers from Kirian’s brood.

Another killer.

It vanished around a corner a hundred feet away, and he immediately set off to track it, cutting across the streets without once setting foot on the roadways. But when he reached the corner and leaned out to gaze down its chosen path, it was already gone.

He was familiar with this area; his eyes instantly took in the possible exit routes it might’ve chosen. There was a stone subway to the right, which might not yet have been flooded to the ceiling – not that running water, or indeed immersion in the stuff, was any obstacle to a creature like him, whatever the legends said. Unless – had it entered one of the houses on the street? Yet, the strength of the blood aroma suggested it hadn’t gone far – it was lingering nearby.

Waiting for him, but not watching.

Of course, it knew I saw it… Took evasive action –

Instinct yet again overrode thought, and he hurled himself back as it came out from under the lip of the roof right beneath him, flipping and clawing at him.

He’d always thought himself more agile than his brethren, the long years of martial discipline endowing him with the prowess that’d let him defeat his own creator. If he could see it coming, he could dodge it. And if he could dodge its attacks without fail, he could overcome even a far-stronger opponent. Sure, spiky iron-demons were out of his league, but he’d been able to dispatch many lesser infernal foes without hassle. This – this was just another vampire. He could see its splayed fingers moving towards his face, and he was already falling back, a tumbling that would become rolling, bringing him back to his feet…

Why then did the fall seem to arrest mid-motion – why then did the claws descend with such awful alacrity?

The hand of his enemy only managed to strike him the once as Dirk flung himself away and down, but once was enough to ruin his face.

And it didn’t stop.

It was hard to tell the thing attacking him had ever been human – it seemed more like a rabid dog, a beast out of nightmare. It gripped him at the bicep and rent his arms apart, keeping him from defending himself as it buried its face in his collarbone and snapped away at him, seemingly heedless of the undead nature of the blood filling its maw. Incalculable pressures tugged at his shoulders but it was his ribcage that felt like it was tearing in two, the vampiric physiology transferring the pressures to unusual weak-points.

It was a vampire-lord. Of all the things that could’ve ended up killing him – it was going to be a vampire-lord.

Just as the scarlet waters rose about him to pull his shredded spirit back, something struck his enemy, hurling it off him and away. Groaning, Dirk half-raised his head, searching for his rescuer.

She wasn’t hard to pick out – a pale entity in an equally-pale night-dress. She looked to be barely an adult, thin-faced and glowering as her amethyst eyes were trained on the beast. She was completely motionless, no heaving of her breast from the exertion of the strike she’d delivered. She too was most-certainly undead.

But she wasn’t a vampire. Dirk could tell, when the vampire-lord sprang back at her. She didn’t even have a chance to react as it hurtled back towards her, skittering across the wet tiles, slathering.

Dirk did.

He was slower than the thing, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t poke a hole in it with the narrow wooden stake he always carried in his boot.

The blow was late and went wide, but only by two inches. Instead of piercing the beast’s heart he struck its pectoral muscle and, thanks to its hideous speed, what should’ve been a minor injury became a mortal gouge, half the front of its chest coming loose on the wooden spike. Flesh flapped and ripped free.

The vampire-lord snarled in pain, but there was nothing holding it back, nothing that was going to reduce its momentum. It collided with the undead waif and the two of them went rolling, its jaws snapping at her face even as they fell from the rooftop, globs of her essence spraying all around.

Weakened beyond belief, Dirk dragged himself to the edge of the roof, still holding the stake for all the good it might’ve done him, pressing the heel of his hand to his face to keep the thing in place. Swaying slightly in the violent wind despite all his powers, he peered over the lip of the tiles.

He looked down into the ruins of a lightning-struck shop, the upper floor almost laid bare. Its own roof lay in pieces across the street below and many shattered tiles were strewn about the interior; through the wide hole Dirk could see shelves, a textile storage area in complete disarray, rolled-up bolts of cloth blasted by rain and storm and fire.

There, atop a pile of debris, he saw her. His rescuer, splayed out. Dying her second death. The beast was straddling her, laughing as it guzzled at her breast.

He’d failed his mistress. He’d failed every last one of Zandrina’s victims. His rejection of evil had proven nothing. There was no accomplishment. Only ashes.

Dirk gripped the stake tight, took aim, and fell after them.

Just one more kill under my belt. Then I’ll go with his spirit. Take it with me back to the river.

To rest in the river forever.