Lucinda Applecott's ears were ringing with a sound almost like silence. She didn't really hear the explosion, nor the deafening crash as the coach landed on its side, wood splintering. The windows were covered on both sides by wooden panels, intended to block the view but now with the added benefit of keeping the shards at bay.

She didn't really feel the pain as she was thrust against the wall, fortunate not to hit the iron sconce.

Her entire being had, for the moment, been reduced to one single, pressing thought.

Is this where I die?

The thought was amplified by the fact that she was here, heading from mildly familiar towards unfamiliar lands, and not at the theatre, or the club, or her room, precisely for this not to happen. Which malicious god, she thought, with a bitterness only the subconscious can muster, was watching her?

The Vampire rose to his feet with gritted teeth as she still lay there dazed. His movements seemed blurry, like he was moving through smoke. She noticed blood running down the side of his face. She was not sure whether there was blood running down her own.

He didn't check on her. He barely even looked at her as he slammed himself against the ceiling, which now held a door. What felt like black snow, or rather like black hail, settled around her. Even through her detached senses, she felt the sting of neglect.

He must have succeeded in what he was doing, because suddenly he was gone. She wasn't sure how long she was lying there alone before finally the cries reached her mind.

Eyes snapped open. She sat up, recoiling at the burning pain that dominated the right side of her body. Leaving her arm unsupported felt as though someone was trying to rip it off, so she struggled to stand up while cradling it. Was it broken? Surely it was broken. She had never felt such pain before. But she was determined, more than ever, to live. The pain fuelled her, because it meant she had not yet lost.

When she finally managed to poke her head out of the door, she saw the Vampire chasing someone down. With the billowing cape, his pale skin and ashen hair contrasting the surrounding darkness, he looked truly terrifying. The light of flickering flames, struggling to gain hold on the heavily coated wood, illuminated a well-maintained but simple dirt road and flat, grassy fields speckled with trees.

They could not be far from a main road, and they definitely had not travelled on an unguarded road. This meant that, whoever had attacked them, had done so either very meticulously, or very impulsively. She hoped it was the latter.

Lucinda Applecott had no intention of waiting to see whether the fire would end up winning, and eventually managed to make a rather undignified exit from the coach, tumbling to the floor where she was just about ready to cry from the pain.

Fortunately she did not, for when she had regained some composure she saw a dishevelled man wearing shabby clothes and nursing deep wounds, like claw marks, that left red stains. He was looking at her with abject fear.

This emboldened her to rise to her full height and, while still cradling her arm, approach him with a determined step. But the man's fear instantly shifted onto the Vampire emerging from the night, his fine clothes bloodied, singed and torn, his face a grimace of scorn. He was dragging a whimpering woman behind him and all but tossed her next to the man.

"One got away," he snarled. Blood was running down his face, across his lips, dripping from his chin.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The man was catatonic. He made not a single sound. The woman was hunched over, shivering, muttering to herself. The Vampire loomed over her, pulling back her hair to force her to see his face. She screamed, but the Vampire stifled it.

He spoke only one word, but it may as well have been a thousand pitchforks.

"Explain."

But the only explanation that was forthcoming, among spluttering apologies, bouts of weeping and recitations of superstitious curse wards, was as unexpected as it was absurd.

"We were told to do it, m'lord" she managed. "We were told to do it by a Ghost."

***

Lucinda Applecott was sitting on the grass, her back against the comforting firmness of a tree. She watched the Vampire set up his magic for the third time. The Rite, he called it, and it had saved the coachman's life, even though he had appeared to her too far gone. Richard Stoakes was his name. She had not cared to remember it before, even to know it at all, but she would remember it now forever.

Richard Stoakes had been first. Lucinda Applecott had all but forgotten her pain when she saw the torn tissue reconnect like desperate hands, the burnt skin first coagulate, as if liquefying further, only to remain smooth and firm and healthy.

Just how long it took the Vampire to set up this Rite only became obvious to her the second time he did it, this time for her, to mend the broken bone of her arm. He sourced materials from the coach, from the very fire that caused this, and he did so quickly and with determined urgency. But he had taken his time to spread out and form the ashes into a pattern only known to his mind, and then took even more time to just stand there, agonizingly inactive. Had she not seen it work on Richard Stoakes, she would have despaired at this display of mockery. But she held her tongue and bore her pain, for she did not know what thoughts were essential to this magic, what invisible corridors the Vampire was traversing. She did not know how devastating an interruption may be.

Her arm was healing long before she took notice. The pain was the last thing to go.

She now moved her arm, still in disbelief at what she had seen, as the Vampire started the process all over again. He was drawing this pattern of ash for the benefit of the bandits. He did not seem to care about the horse, which appeared to Lucinda Applecott to still be clinging to life, and be a far more worthy receptor of the Vampire's boon than those who would have been their killers.

But the Vampire was not interested in ensuring their means of travel. He was desperate for information.

He hurt them, then taunted them with his healing, now ready to relieve them as it had Richard Stoakes and Lucinda Applecott hersel. Pain made them more cooperative, but not more helpful. They insisted that it had been a Ghost that commanded them, that they had complied out of fear but would never have done so if they had known a Noble Vampire was travelling within the carriage that was to be their target. They gave the spot where the Ghost had caught them in their nightly scavenge, but they swore that they had not seen the Ghost since, nor knew how to contact it.

They described the Ghost as a haggard man, naked save for a thin cloth, his entire form colouring what he was supposed to obscure in a blueish tint.

But they said no more. Not for lack of want. Their words, their worlds, had reached their limit.

To the surprise of Lucinda Applecott, the Vampire stayed true to his unspoken promise and performed his Rite on them, before he chased them away.

Then he forced Richard Stoakes, grateful, bewildered and afraid, to lead the way on foot, abandoning the coach as well as the horse. Lucinda Applecott walked alongside him, trying to keep up with his long stride as efficiently as she could, grateful for her functional choice of dress that morning. She stared ahead at Richard Stoakes, leading with a young and spry body which had been crippled not so long ago. She did not dare break her silence, one she had kept since she first saw this miracle.

"A Ghost!" scoffed the Vampire after what may have been hours of walking.

"Someone, somehow, has been made aware of our search, and is trying to stop us."

He sounded annoyed, even angry, but there was another quality in his voice as well. He sounded almost thrilled. Reassured. Vindicated.

Lucinda Applecott had assumed the same, that jealous guardians of immortality had tried to stop them while they were still mortal. But she did not linger on the fact that, if true, this guardian was not a Vampire but a Ghost, an incorporeal being, immortal perhaps but not in a way she thought desirable. Nor did she linger on the fact that this made the Vampire's claim to the Tome of UnDeath appear less certain than he had made her believe. He, too, was facing resistance. He, too, had an enemy.

No. Lucinda Applecott's mind went back to the horror with which those peasants had looked upon her. She remembered the looks that Richard Stoakes had given her, so very unlike those he must have stolen before. They were just like the looks he gave the Vampire.

However spurious, however uninformed the inference, she was seen as One of Them.

And now the Vampire had said it as well. Casually, in passing, secondary to the point he was trying to make, as if it was a fact barely worthy of stating.

He had called it our search.

In spite of having brushed against death, Lucinda Applecott felt invincible.