by Ugland, Eric
“Uh, yeah.”
He began making minute gestures with his hands.
“No,” he murmured. “Nope. No. No. Not one. Interesting, but no.”
“Keep going,” I said. “I’m telling the other two to do the same thing.”
“Can you cast—”
“My one spell is not at all useful for this,” I interrupted to say, then I scurried across the street.
“What is he doing?” Yuri asked.
“Mass casting identify,” I replied.
“I’m an idiot,” Bear said, and began to do the same thing.
“You’re going to be identifying the same people,” I snapped.
“I can see most of his spells,” Bear snapped back. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
In less than five minutes, our little team had cleared everyone we could see, so we set up shop again a few blocks farther west. Again, nothing.
Four more attempts, and we had moved to the southern side of the mob. On the second attempt over there, we found our target.
Chapter Fifty-One
A young man was standing at the back of the crowd, watching it go by as if it was a parade. To be fair, if you ignored all the angry faces and torches, the mob kind of was like a parade.
Our target was a slight man, good-looking, thin, with a small saber on his belt. It was a very fancy sword that I doubted had ever actually been used. Hell, his muscles looked like they’d never been used. Fancy clothes, clean shoes. Another rich kid.
The vampire leaned against a lamppost, arms crossed. He didn’t look like he was on the hunt. Instead, he really just seemed at peace with being lord of the universe. There was a smug smile on his face that made me kind of want to punch him.
“Plan?” I asked.
Everyone looked at me.
“Okay,” I said. “What exactly do we need from him?”
“Blood,” Bear said. “I will be powering Yuri’s Blood Tracker ability, which should, theoretically, go to Montan-er-gomery as well. This vampire’s blood will contain traces of the blood of his maker. So if we get this vampire’s blood, we will also have the blood of the maker. And then it is just a matter of following each trail, collecting blood up the chain of vampires.”
“Sounds simple enough,” I said.
“If a bit macabre,” Arno added.
“It’s vampires,” I countered. “Everything about them is macabre. Blood and guts are inevitable.”
A bunch of plans rocketed through my mind, but none of them seemed right.
Instead, I took my cloak off, crept up behind the man, and then threw it over him. He cried out, but my cloak muffled the sound. I pulled it tighter over his head.
Yuri was already there, having seemingly read my mind. He scooped up the vampire’s feet, and we sprinted away from the crowd, the squirming vamp held tight between us.
“This way!” Arno hissed, gesturing down an alley.
We followed his directions, and wound up a in a small carriage yard tucked behind a large home. All the windows were dark, and, besides the muffled shouts of our new friend, it was quiet.
“You guys sure he’s a vampire?” I asked.
Both Bear and Arno nodded. For good measure, I got a notification from Bear.
* * *
VAMPIRE
Undead
Lvl 18
HP: Moderate
MP: Low
Known Weaknesses: Fire, Sun
* * *
“Drop him,” I told Yuri.
He did.
The vampire struggled out of the cloak for a heartbeat, but then I helped him find the light, using my sword to slice through the cloak and through the vampire’s head.
Well, part of the vampire’s head. My aim was a little off, so I just sort of removed the top third of the creature’s skull.
The vampire reared back in pain, eyes open, fangs extended.
“I will kill—” he started. He didn’t get to finish because a glaive went right through his neck. The vampire’s head toppled to the ground, bouncing down the cobblestones.
“Get the blood,” Bear shouted as the body started to fountain up a thick, dark red sludge that I suppose could, given a generous definition, be considered blood.
As it turns out, we hadn’t exactly thought this part through. I tried to use my hands to catch the blood, while Arno tried to use the hood of his cloak, and Yuri pulled a helmet from a pouch. The helmet seemed like our best bet, until it became clear there were plenty of air and eye holes in it. The cloak just sort of soaked up the blood, and we were left with what I was catching in my hands.
“We need a bowl,” Bear said.
“Something that might have been useful to know,” I said, “say, five minutes ago?”
She scowled at me. “Get the top of his skull,” she snapped, pointing over at the bonus chunk of head I’d initially cut from the vampire.
Arno made a face, but dutifully scooped up the skull cap and then scooped out the brains, and we tried to get a collection of the thick sludge-blood in it.
“Enough?” I asked, my hands sticky. I tried to ignore the queasy feeling brewing in my stomach.
“More than,” she said. “Yuri, your hand?”
Yuri held his hand out, and she sat in it. She held onto one of his fingers, and put her other hand into the blood.
Her eyes closed, and she muttered something. Yuri flinched as if stung, but it didn’t seem to bother Bear.
A light sparked inside the small pool of blood that lay in the skull cap. Then all the blood seemed to get sucked into the light, which rose up about twenty feet into the air and hung there for a moment.
“Uh,” I said, “is this supposed--“
The red-hued light stretched out, forming a line.
“Follow it,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Someone grab the head.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
It was an odd thing, to follow a red trail about twenty feet off the ground. Especially because the trail didn’t exactly bend to the rules of architecture. When we encountered a building, we had to go around it in order to find where the trail came out. Plus we had to keep an eye out for the bands of mercenaries moving about, and the mob, who didn’t seem particularly keen on following an established parade route. There were definitely offshoots coming out towards the nicer homes and shops, groups who were most certainly keen on looting.
Our marker led us almost perfectly south. We hiked up the hill until we got to a small block that had tall, narrow homes on it. A small metal fence surrounded the homes, and each one had a little staircase that led to the front door. It looked homey. Nice.
The red line went into the second-floor window of one of them. It was dark, like all the other windows in the place. It was quiet. the mob was far enough away that we could only hear the vaguest bit of their fury.
I went up to the gate, and looked up the short staircase to the front door. It wasn’t closed all the way. I pointed at the door, and mimed it being open. Then, I pointed to myself, and upstairs.
Nods from the crew.
I pushed the gate open, wincing as it squeaked. Then I crept up the stairs, moving low and slow. The door opened without any noise. There were a lot of small rooms with big fireplaces inside. Opulent without being gaudy. I heard people talking upstairs, the low murmuring of a conversation between companions, or maybe lovers.
I pulled my sword out, and led with the blade as I went up to the second floor. The narrow hallway had three doors off it, all on one side. At the far end, there was a window that looked onto the street below.
The red line pointed from me to a wall, a spot that was basically equidistant between two of the doors.
I felt a tap on my leg. Yuri was behind me on the stairs. He pointed to the middle door, then to himself. Then the far door, and to me. I nodded. We’d take the doors at the same time. I slid my feet across the carpet, doing my best not to make any noise.
Yuri reached his door, and waited for me
to get to mine.
He looked at me and nodded. I held up three fingers, then counted down.
Three.
Two.
One.
I used my ability, Make An Entrance, and burst through the door.
The action in the room stopped immediately, the occupants of the room surprised and unable to act, hopefully thanks to my ability. I took a second to get my bearings. I was in a wide open bedroom, a four poster bed against one wall, a writing desk under the windows to the front.
A man and a woman were rather, um, intertwined on the bed, which meant the red line pointed to both of them.
“Shit,” I snapped, “which one of you is a vampire?”
They both looked at me. Then the two of them leapt from the bed in a singular motion, mouths wide, fangs out, hands turning into wicked claws as they rushed through the air.
I cut across, and the sword made contact with the man’s hands, slicing through them in mid-transformation. It scattered some fingers and some claws across the floor.
The woman latched onto me and reared back, readying to suck the blood from my neck. But I managed to get my hand in her face and shoved her back.
She had her claws in me, so I couldn’t get her off me, but she also couldn’t get her mouth to close on my hand. Thanks, unbreakable bones.
The man, meanwhile, was coming at me from my right. I think he still thought he had functioning fingers, because he made to grab me and kind of instead just sort of smeared his blood across my torso.
I got an elbow up and smashed it into his nose, which gave me just enough room to plant my foot and shove him back with my shoulder.
He stumbled two steps back, and I gave a mighty swing with my sword, leaning out to really get some speed going.
It was a clean cut this time, and I lopped his head right off. It made a heady (ha) thump when it hit the floor, and rolled twice on the thick carpet.
Lady Vampire screamed and redoubled her struggle, desperate to get her fangs in my hand.
But with only a single opponent, it was easy to get the sword against her neck, and cut.
Yuri came the through the door. He looked from one vampire to the next.
“Are you unhurt?” he asked.
“Fine and dandy,” I said. But then a quick panic ran through me as I wondered if it was possible to get infected with vampirism because my hand had a few new holes in it. They healed up right quick, but did that just lock the vampiric whatever inside and I’d be lusting for blood in the morning?
By the time I stopped the circular flow of illogic in my head, Bear and Arno were in the room.
Arno produced a silver bowl, from where I have no idea, and collected blood from the male vampire first.
Bear hopped over to Yuri, sat on Yuri’s paw, and did her thing.
The red light ball lifted up in the sky and then pointed right back down at the female vampire.
“Well ain’t that nice,” I said.
She shook her head. “A pity to waste a spell like that on a night like this.”
The female vampire’s blood led off to the east.
I sighed, and helped Yuri load the vampire corpses into his sack of bodies.
We were off on the hunt once again.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The next vampire was, once again, a young man. We found him in an alley, standing over the corpse of a woman. His face was covered in blood, and he almost put up something of a fight. But with both Yuri and I there on one vampire, it was an almost textbook procedure. I distracted him with a flashy attempt at cutting him down, leaving Yuri to beheaded the vampire from behind.
Bear had the next red light line up within, maybe, thirty seconds, and we were off.
South again, deeper into the wealthy area.
We got lucky. The vampire in question, a beautiful young woman with paranormally pale skin and pitch-black hair, was sneaking out of the second floor of her mansion.
All I had to do was wait at the bottom of the tree she was climbing down. When her feet were on the ground, I slashed. I felt a little bad because she seemed so innocent. But I reminded myself that she had probably killed a bunch of people already, just to keep herself fed.
Bear and Yuri got the next red line up. I watched it ripple out through the city, heading west.
We followed it, moving quietly through the shadows of the city, taking as many back alleys as we could to get where we were going.
Where we were going was not where I wanted to go. The mob.
The line trickled out in front of us, zipping along. It seemed to only lead a certain distance from us, because it really never seemed to be more than a hundred, or so, feet long. The mob got louder as we got closer. Mere blocks from the bulk of the crowd, our red tracking line pointed up.
“The roof,” I said, pausing at an alley mouth to reconnoiter. I pointed up.
Yuri looked, and shook his head. “Tough to get up there,” he said.
“I got this,” I said.
I dashed across the street, and jumped to grab hold of the lowest windowsill. A bit like a monkey, or more likely an orangutan, I hauled my big butt up the side of the building, holding still right below the steep roof. I looked back down, and saw my crew waiting in the alley, all watching me.
No one made any sort of motion, so I figured I was safe.
I pulled myself up and over the edge. There was a small lip before the steep rise of copper-plated pyramids that made up the roof.
A man knelt at the far edge, peering over at the crowd below.
I walked up behind him, and just swung my sword.
Then I had to dive to grab the head before it dropped onto the unsuspecting crowd below. As it was, there was more than a little blood that escaped and fell down. Whoops.
I hauled the headless corpse back to the point I’d climbed up, and then just sort of dropped it over. He was dead already — no big deal. When I went back for the head, and took a moment to look at what was going on down below.
The mob had grown since we’d last seen it. They were surrounding the Legion barracks, just a ways further west. But the Legion was out in force, a wall of giant shields. They weren’t marching on the crowd — they just held their line in place. No one in the mob seemed brave enough to start something. It was a stalemate.
Getting back down was quicker than climbing up. I was starting to feel a bit cocky about this mission.
I put the head in Yuri’s sack, and then noticed the dark look from Bear.
“Did you have to throw the corpse off the roof?” she asked. “We barely had enough blood—”
“Sorry,” I said, “just trying to be efficient.”
Arno was pulling on my sleeve.
“We need to hurry this up,” he said. “I can feel the weather working weakening. Anything we are doing, magic-wise is going to be much more obvious very soon.”
“Let’s keep hunting then,” I said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The red line led us back to the posh district, but all the way to the edge of the city. We were standing on what was, essentially, the southernmost street of Osterstadt. There were large estates, and behind them, steep cliffs that turned into high and impassable mountains.
The red line went straight through one of the estates and into the mountainside.
“Fuck,” I said, staring at the line disappearing into the dark rock beyond. “The Master is already out of the city.”
“Let’s try a thing first,” Bear said from her perch on Arno’s head. “Yuri, stick your arm out along the red line.”
Yuri gave her a confused look, but he followed the order.
“And Montana,” Bear continued, “you do the same.”
I took a second to line myself up with the red track and stuck my arm out.
“You two move apart,” she said, “and keep your arm pointing along the line.”
I walked farther west while Yuri went east, and we both moved our arms in the appropriate direction.
&
nbsp; “I don’t get what we’re doing,” I said.
“You’re triangulating,” Arno answered. “And our target cannot be that far away, because you two are moving your arms too much for that. I bet he is in the Tower.”
“What tower?” I asked.
“The Tower. The one hidden in the cliffs.”
I stared at the dark rock, but with just the vague bit of moonlight overhead, I couldn’t make anything out. And it was too far for darkvision to give me an edge.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Somewhere there,” Arno said, his arm pointing to the cliffs in a way that was not at all helpful.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. It’s somewhat hidden—”
“Somewhat?”
“—but if you know where to look in the day, you can see the glint coming off the windows.”
“So we’re climbing the cliffs now?”
“We can just take the stairs,” Arno said, walking past me with a spring in his step. He seemed overjoyed to be helpful.
Yuri shook his head at me as he walked by.
I just shrugged.
Up where we were — or down where we were, depending on how you wanted to look at it — there weren’t any protesters. There were, however, guards out in force. They looked askance at us, but no one really cared about three weirdos walking around in the middle of the night. As long as we didn’t mess with their assigned homes, they didn’t care. Which made me curious — why were so many guards available? How had the families in the mansions known to hire guards for this particular evening? Stuff to figure out as soon as I was done killing vampires, I supposed.
The Tower may have been hidden, but the stairway up to it was relatively easy to find and follow. Strange choice. A small wrought-iron gate blocked the front of it, and two guards stood on either side. Both were men, both were handsome, and both had on some armor. It wasn’t the newest or the fanciest, and it actually made them stand out, because it seemed a bit like they’d taken the armor off a museum stand. But it still looked capable. Bronze scalemail and a conical sort of helmet.
