Nighteye sensed someone alive downstairs, and he and Fangmoon went on a trip to the basement to apply whatever healing they might to the poor wretch who’d been abandoned in a roomful of corpses. The rest of us stayed upstairs, listening to the vampire’s tale.
Lodus had been your average assassin trying to keep his head down and his belly full when he’d been ‘begotten’ by this overpowered vampire king (or whatever Timesnatcher had called him). He was the first of many to be so created… He had enlisted Shandarah and Kirian when searching for their creator, to learn from him or kill him – it seemed they hadn’t quite been sure which. But the magisters had interrupted them, and inadvertently awakened the latent thirst within them in an attempt to bring them under the effects of an enthralling spell.
Em’s hands clenched as she listened to the torrent of information pouring out of my newest minion’s mouth.
The trio had intended to find the worst of the worst to kill, emulating the heroic vampires of legend, to appease their own consciences, if not do some actual good. But that had quickly devolved into a nightmare when Shandarah tried to turn her recently-estranged husband and son into creatures like her.
“Sometimes all you want is control, and no matter what you do, it eludes you,” Lodus said in a quavering voice. “All the power in the world is the thing you want most, and the thing you need least. It’s hollow. All it does is change the battlefield. I –“
“You let her change her husband. Her son.” Stormsword glowered at the vampire from behind her phoenix mask. “And they became ghouls. There can be no excuse for it.”
“That’s not on me,” he snarled at her, then, as if experiencing a sudden pain, he snapped his head back to gaze at me. “She had her own will. She’s… She…”
“Had?” I asked gently.
“She took her own life.”
“She was not alive,” Stormsword said coldly.
“Unlife. Whatever this thing is. Them first, then herself.” He shook his head, eyes wide and despondent. “I can’t control them. Kirian started changing my friends, and with some it even stuck. And when I tried to stop him, his… children took his side. He found others – and they’d already fed, they flocked to him. I… I let them be. I just… There’s nothing I can do.” He raised his eyes to meet mine. “They’re assassins. Trained to kill. There’s nothing I can do.”
I shook my head, smiling. “That may not strictly be true.”
“Feychilde?” Spiritwhisper said quietly, not taking his eyes off Lodus.
I looked at him, the swirling blue mask covering his upper face, coloured metal shaped like trails of flame rising off above his head.
“Can I ask it a question?”
“Erm – well, of course…” The question baffled me. “I didn’t mean to give the impression you couldn’t.”
“How many did he turn? This Kirian bloke.”
Lodus went through them, muttering under his non-breath, ticking them off one by one. Some had escaped, a poet and a huntress, it sounded like – which made no sense to me whatsoever. Others – a phantom, and a lady? – had become something else…
“Six,” my minion answered the enchanter at last. “Six became vampires, ten became these horrible, gaunt things. Ghouls, I guess. All of them under Kirian’s sway.”
“And how many of the others, turned the same night as you, did he bring in?”
“Eight or nine… I think. Maybe more, by tonight.”
Killstop hissed. “There were seventeen turned by the vampire elder. Remember, the map?”
I frowned. “Damn. Damn damn damn.”
“So…” I could almost hear the cogs turning in Spiritwhisper’s head. “So Timesnatcher was wrong?”
“It would look like it.” Stormsword still glared at Lodus, fists clenched.
“He thought more of the vampires sheltering in this place were changed when Lodus was,” Killstop said. “We’ve got eight or nine of them based here, which means there are eight or nine of them out there. Lost.” She sighed. “See, I didn’t see this…” She opened and closed her hands nervously, started pacing.
“You’re wondering what else you missed?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Don’t. There’s a million things you missed. Diviners aren’t unlimited, or so I’m given to believe. You can be wrong. You can misinterpret. And you can only see so far. Even if the others don’t get in the way, there’s still a horizon, right?”
She stopped pacing, stared at me for three infinite seconds, then resumed pacing again.
“Feychilde.” Stormsword’s voice was almost unrecognisable as Em’s, not just because of the accent she was putting on – but because she practically growled my name. “You must turn it over to me now.”
I caught the dangerous glint in her eye and I knew what she intended.
I hadn’t ever actually resolved myself on the question of joining with undead creatures. Demons, no, never. But the undead were different. They were almost human, even if all hope of true humanity had been irrevocably lost. Netherhame and Shallowlie used them, and they didn’t seem so bad. Dustbringer used them…
I admitted it to myself – I felt sorry for Lodus.
“Isn’t it better if I keep him?” I asked. “I can use him. Make him fight, or make myself stronger, faster…”
“I saw you,” she said, voice low, brittle. “I saw what you did to that demon, when yours was being hurt. Now all I want to do is kill one. You know what he did to those I am sworn to defend. Those humans.”
I looked from Stormsword’s hard eyes to Lodus’s pitiful purple ones.
“I don’t think they can be permanently destroyed like this,” I said. “I think, from what I’ve read, his spirit’s just going to linger in the nether-world, and if there’s some ritual to avoid it, it’s something I’ve not read anything about. I…”
If we destroyed him properly, would he pass on? To Celestium?
No – he’d be Infernum-bound, surely…
“I’ll take my chances,” the wizard said, staring fixedly at the vampire again.
I sighed inwardly. This was why we’d come, after all. It wasn’t just to catch the killers – it was to make Em feel better. Give her some closure.
“I’m not responsible for whatever you think I am,” Lodus said, trembling. “I don’t want to die, not again – please, I don’t wanna go back there – please, Master…”
I ground my teeth together as I hardened my heart.
Have to give her the choice. Have to let her make the decision. If it had been my friends…
“Okay,” I said, nodding to her, “of course, but if you –”
I wasn’t expecting her to put her hand out and funnel a beam of lightning from her palm straight into Lodus’s forehead.
She approached him, the blinding tongue of flickering energy that connected them only growing in intensity as she stepped closer, then closer again – his head smoking, he flung out his arms wide and sounds were pulled from his throat… horrid, wet, bleating sounds.
“Mortiforn,” I heard Killstop say in a hushed tone.
The wizard got close enough to finally clap her hand right down on top of his head – and in a burst of white light the vampire exploded into dust.
“Awesome,” Spiritwhisper intoned.
She let the wind flow about her, keeping the wisps of smoke from nearing her, steering the dust away from her clothes, her shoes, as though even in death she didn’t want anything to do with him.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Then she looked back at us. “So – where next?”
“Follow me,” Killstop said. “I could use you at the front door.”
She turned and started heading back down the stairs, Stormsword and Spiritwhisper on her heels.
I left the room and its gently-drifting dust, closing the door behind me.
I hadn’t anticipated Em’s pure rage – I’d seen her angry before but not like this. I almost felt hesitant about proceeding. I knew catching the vampires and ghouls was a good thing, even if that meant wiping them off the plane, but was this really going to help Em get over what she’d seen?
I couldn’t make that decision for her, even now, and I couldn’t deny her the right to see them dead as recompense for what they’d done.
They’re dead already, I reminded myself. This is just putting them out of their misery… Just like the Body Brigade…
“How’s it going down there?” Killstop asked as we descended.
“We’ve got two breathing,” Fangmoon reported. “Major blood loss, necrotised extremities. Can’t stabilise one of them, though. I think they’re dying.”
“I might be able to help with that,” I said.
While Killstop, Stormsword and Spiritwhisper exited the stairwell and headed back to the bar area, I continued, floating on down to the floor below, my wings providing me just enough light to see by.
The steps over which I flew were coated in red, blood both dry and wet, the latest puddles slowly congealing into an awful paint. The stench was like that of a slaughterhouse.
Which was basically what this place had become – except the only livestock these creatures fed on was human.
I couldn’t forget the look of horror in Lodus’s amethyst eyes, no matter how hard I tried.
The steps terminated at an open door, beyond which a macabre sight greeted my eyes. A room, twelve-foot ceiling, walls of roughly-hewn stone. Twenty-five, thirty feet in diameter. A large space, for a structure such as this.
The large space was filled, its unmoving occupants strewn about carelessly, broken like discarded toys.
I saw everything, and there was no unseeing it. These accursed eyes of mine pierced the darkness, uninhibited, falling on every grisly detail.
Instead I focussed my gaze on the druids crouching over their patients, in one of the only empty spots on the floor. I picked my way through the… mess to reach them, and ejected Avaelar at the same time.
“Master!” he moaned, quickly averting his eyes from his surroundings, staring up at the ceiling. “This is a bleak awakening!”
“Sorry, er – I’ll try to be gentler next time,” I said. “Can you do anything with these two?”
Fangmoon and Nighteye shuffled aside, looking worn and weary to my eyes.
The sylph breathed in the faces of both the dying people. A charcoal-skinned young woman and a white-skinned old man, both pale as sheets. I purposefully kept my eyes from their lacerations.
Avaelar breathed again, and then looked up at me, shaking his head.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked the druids.
“Vampires,” Fangmoon spat.
“We surmised that the wounds themselves are laced with, hm, nethernal poison, I suppose you’d call it,” Nighteye offered, “so after several attempts to heal the affected areas we, hm, employed a spell of great efficacy to remove and reform those areas –“
I shook my head. “Get to the point, Nighteye.”
Fangmoon sighed. “We can’t do anything with them here. We need L-”
“-Leafcloak,” I finished her word.
I’d hoped to do this without involving the senior champions, but if lives were on the line, what choice did we have?
“I can try again –” Fangmoon said, looking down at the comatose victims they’d been treating.
“Nay, madam,” Avaelar interjected, “yon noble sir has it aright. Betwixt ye there is neither will nor wisdom sufficient to accomplish this deed.”
“You’re pleasant,” Fangmoon said blandly.
“He gets nervous around people,” I said and, ignoring his protests, continued: “Are you going to get in contact…?”
The druidess pulled out her glyphstone and held it up – there was every chance she was already mentally calling out Leafcloak’s name.
I handed Nighteye my healing elixir. “Give this a try?”
He nodded, accepted it, then held it up to scrutinise it. “Thanks. These can have a lot of, hm, juice in them if they’re of a quality – rank six, essence of mjolwort –“
From upstairs I heard a muted thump, and then another.
Followed by growls, screams.
“Feychilde!” Killstop snapped suddenly. “Get up here!”
I quickly waved Avaelar back into my body, then lifted a foot off the ground and sped back up the stairs, sprouting my wings as I went.
In the bar area several tables had been tossed around, and there were two vampires trapped halfway up the wall, pinned there by a thick sheet of ice. Their limbs and torsos were covered, leaving only their necks and snarling faces exposed.
One, female, spat incoherencies about wanting our blood, while the other brooded, merely emitting a low growl from his throat.
Opposite them, the three champions were standing well back, three pairs of eyes trained on the captives.
“Look out,” Killstop said, pointing, even as I soared into the room – the female vampire managed to get an arm free, cracking the icy shell, but Stormsword was instantly on the case, pouring another half-ton of freezing air and water onto the creature with one outstretched hand.
I floated up in front of the vampires.
“Be mine.”
They looked at me. It was only a young boy and girl. Their faces were distorted by the fangs hidden beneath their lips, by their pallor, by their strange eyes…
Eyes they now lowered deferentially.
“You can let them down now.” I turned to face Stormsword and waved my hand at the ice.
“Should we?” she asked, looking about with a frown on her face.
“Yes,” I said aloud.
These were… just kids… Did we have to destroy them all in the most horrific way possible? Would she be satisfied with no less?
“Yes,” Killstop immediately echoed me. “They might have more information on our targets.”
“Yeah, bring ’em down,” Spiritwhisper said, “so you can fry them into little piles of dust again.”
Stormsword flashed him a grin, and for a moment I rather detested the enchanter.
She melted away the ice to steam, allowing them to fall to the ground, where they landed like cats, wary, purple eyes on us.
“Feychilde,” Killstop said, “bind these things to tell only the truth and then go over to the doorway. We’re going to get a couple more visitors in a few minutes.”
“As you say, your highness.”
I waited in the shadows of the doorway, halfway between Em’s silvery radiance and that of the full moon, brilliant enough to even pierce the clouds covering Oldtown, flooding Welderway with light – to me, at least. I could hear Killstop questioning the poor boy and girl, but I was training my supernatural senses on another sound.
Footfalls – stamping feet – approaching over the rooftops opposite us.
Twenty. Thirty. Maybe forty things, breathing heavily, slavering.
I peered up, and I could make them out. Ghouls, their clothes ripped from pointless injuries the pain of which they no longer possessed the intelligence to feel, their heads swollen, jaws open wide like those of yawning lions. They went hunched, arms hanging low, hands fixed in claw-like positions. Their fingers and chins looked painted black in the moonlight.
Painted like the stone steps to the basement were painted.
“A couple?” I cried. “Lodus said they only had ten… there’s way more than that here.”
“What? No – no, I didn’t see this… Guys, get up here!”
“It’s okay, no rush. I can handle some ghouls. They can’t be tougher than little demons, right?”
“Alright.” The diviner sounded sceptical. “Let me know when the vampires show up. Less than two minutes.”
I dragged my reinforced circle with me, leaving behind a triangle-square-pentagon combination that covered the roadway near the door. Nothing would get in behind me.
I flew up – I could catch the ghouls before they descended –
They pre-empted me, hurling themselves bodily down the thirty or more feet between the roof and the road. It looked like some of them dislocated their shoulders, twisted their ankles, even inverted their knees – but that didn’t stop them thrusting themselves back onto their feet, loping towards me at a run, gibbering.
If they couldn’t see me, they could definitely smell me – my warm flesh.
I floated into the centre of the street, readying the blades of force surmounting my shield. I wouldn’t need my demons for this, or even Flood Boy – not anymore. They would destroy themselves on my barrier.
Ten yards away the ghouls came to a sudden stop, the ones at the back halting before they crashed into the front row who’d already frozen, staring towards me with hungry purple eyes.
I had a sudden sense of foreboding.
“Thou art as once I was, necromancer: Founder-kin.”
I couldn’t move until he finished speaking – the words moved lethargically in the air between us, some chronomantic effect that slowed my thoughts.
I turned, taking in the man just beneath me, skin and hair and clothing all devoid of colour, white upon white upon white – except for the eyes – the eyes that burned with alien, nethernal intellect.
“And thou hast taken it upon thyself to win from me the get of my bloodline.”
“Killstop!” I tried to scream as he took a step straight into my blades of force – they snapped off in his flesh and dissipated.
I went to fly, turning my face and pressing myself forwards with both wizardry and wings –
He must’ve lunged right into my circle because I saw it fade, my stars winking out – I felt the crunch as he clutched my ankle.
Felt the sickening pain as his grip intensified, splitting flesh and crumbling bone so that my foot flopped like a dead fish.
He swung me like an oversized bat, bringing my head and shoulder down into contact with the ground. A drool of blood and teeth exploded from my face.
“In recompense for thine insolence I owe thee less than thou shalt receive – be still!”
My fingers released the explosive dagger’s hilt, but not because of his words – because he leaned over me and lashed out with one red hand, gripping my fingers in his own.
Bands of excruciating iron.
Zel!
“I owe thee only death, and my miscreants lust for thy flesh; yet I shall offer thee undeath.” His face was before mine, awful in its beauty, its scent of rose-petals and blood. “I shall bestow upon thee the power that is the mantle of mine office, and take thee with me into the shadows cast by thy Mund. Shall that suffice as punishment?”
“Kas!” my trusted advisor shrilled between her screams. Could she feel what I could feel?
I’d tried to do it without her. I’d failed.
It was too late. The vampire-lord’s free hand flicked out and struck me, the motion faster than Em’s lightning, more forceful than Fangmoon’s fists.
He raked his fingers through my flesh and took hold of me by the ribcage.
Searing agony exploded through my torso and my mind. My head swung back and my lips parted. I felt disconnected. It was like an animal had climbed in my throat to roar as I felt the air burst from my lungs. Only some through my mouth.
I caught a glimpse of Killstop, two wooden stakes in her hands, hurtling through the air towards me. Somehow, as if there weren’t other things to worry about, I found myself wondering where she’d got them from.
Trying to clutch at normalcy. A line of thought that wasn’t just despair.
Then there was the sensation of weightlessness.
I wasn’t falling. I was flying. He gripped me by the hand and by the bones inside my chest, and flew with me.
Not like a wizard, with wind rushing. Not with wings, like a giant bat from the kids’ stories. No.
Like a sliver of the glass moon, moving effortlessly through the night sky as though it were only the darkness that moved about us.
Only the darkness that moved…