“No, I thought he was pretty, so I hit him with my club and now I’m going to take him home to my cave to make passionate love to him. Of course he’s the witch.”
“By Calcia, what has gotten into you?”
“Well, this guy isn’t exactly light and we’re all just stood here contemplating my comedic, yet untrue, sexual preferences. Can we go yet? I don’t fancy getting caught stealing a person from a city. It’s just a little bit on the side of extremely rude.”
There is a glint of mischief in his eyes. I glance to the skies to make sure they’re clear. As expected, they are, so I beat my wings heavily and lift myself from the ground, slowly rising up toward the heavens.
This success will do some good in pleasing Legion after the Angel-Mexis debacle. I hope it will, anyway.
- Muzbeth -
The rumours of me must have already spread to the town we are headed into; Longbridge. Kellum and I both look alive at the moment, which is a rarity. I can now use magic to appear as a normal person. Basically, the more blood and thus magic within me, the more normal I look; except for my teeth. They don’t change. Though I’m sure I could change them if I expended a little magic, but what would be the point in hiding what I am? I’m only human looking at the moment because Kellum asked me to very respectfully.
We’ve both gained new clothes too; my old funereal garb is long gone and now I wear a simple plain white shirt and breeches, held at the waist by a sash-belt. I’ve had a haircut, and my beard shaved. That was two days previously, while Kellum was sleeping. The barber had nicked my chin whilst shaving me, and he was amazed to see the small cut heal before his very eyes; he had muttered something about magic or a miracle or something. He was an idiot, so showed him what I really was, and killed him. It was only fair. I, and people in general, shouldn’t have to suffer such inadequacy.
Shaven and cleaned, I look like an inheritor to land. Kellum on the other hand is dressed in a spectacularly dramatic long coat. He’d taken it from the Macer of Sacrem, and the workmanship was perfect. Unfortunately, it got a little blood stained when I had stuck my claws into the Macer’s throat. Kellum had managed to find a way of keeping the garment, despite its ruddy stain; he dyed it black. It was originally white with some kind of silver stitching, and now that same silver glitters in the moonlight. I don’t know how or why it didn’t go black like the white and crimson had. Beneath this new coat of his, he wears a white shirt and black waistcoat, which has an expensive iron fob watch tucked into the pocket. Knee high, dark leather boots and dark grey loose fitting britches finish his attire; the vampire looks like how I imagine a big-city Macer would, though surrounded by dirty provincial commoners.
As we enter the town, we see that a raging fire illuminates its central area. As we draw closer, I notice that within the flame is a blackened corpse, which seems to be held to a post in the centre of the bright inferno. We head closer, confident that we will have some fun here. I glance sideways at Kellum and he gives me that weird grin that I’ve somehow come to like.
But then it drops, and Kellum follows suit, falling to his knees. He brings his hands up to his head and begins muttering to himself. Suddenly he emits a short scream, drawing the attention of a few villagers that heard it from around the fire. Kellum quietens but does not get up. My ally looks terrified. I squat beside him and manhandle his face so that he is looking at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. I am more worried by my concern for him than I actually am for him.
He tries to speak, but before he can get any words out he screams again. I send a little calming magic into him and reiterate my question. This time he answers.
“It’s a vision. You have to protect us. You hav–”
His third scream makes me start. I’ve never seen him in such a panicked state before. I would like to say it scared me, but instead I just get a sense of power from it; seeing him so weak and defenceless only serves to bolster my own ego. I feel so full of energy that I must be impossible to defeat. I am truly and undeniably immortal. “Undeniably”? Maybe I am actually learning something by having Kellum with me... even if it is just his words.
The few villagers that started towards us have stopped now and are stood a good many paces from where Kellum whimpers. I straighten and turn to face them. Some of the men have tools. Maybe they hope that they can stop me. How foolish.
Surely they’ve heard of the obliterated settlements. The few victims I have left alive to spread the legend should be doing their jobs, and yet here we have a typical human answer. ‘We can stop it; surely it can’t be that powerful’. Oh, how wrong they can be. I think I’ll have some fun and play with them a little.
“Halt people of Longbridge. We bring you terrible news!”
My voice is still as disturbing as when I first met Kellum. I could heal it, but it does lend a certain air of the sinister to my words.
The people’s numbers are slowly growing as more people come from the fire, and from out of houses to look at the spectacle of the two strange men in their village. The man at the head of the group comes and addresses me. The civilians come up behind him to listen in to our conversation; curiosity evidently overcomes fear of vampires in this town.
“What news do you have for us traveller?”
“Do you know of the vampire that hunts the peoples of Sacrem?” I ask, with a smile on my lips.
“That vampire has been dealt with. We found her feasting on one of our fishermen this morning. She is burned now.” As he tells me of their triumph, he gestures to the blazing pyre behind him. I’m the vampire; so who the hell was that up there? I chuckle to myself; they killed an innocent.
“How can you be sure that she was the vampire?”
“She was feasting on blood. What else could she be? We are lucky to have stopped that brief plight.” And with that he turns, grinning to his people, his arms outstretched in victory, soaking up their cheers. I find it difficult to keep from laughing.
“Brief? You have not solved your problem so easily.” I sneer at the man. He is a fool and I will not abide such idiocy.
Their leader faces me once more, a look of distaste on his face.
“How so? And what is wrong with your master?”
“He is not my master! He belongs to me,” I bellow back, anger suddenly filling me.
The man talking to me takes an angry step forward, and leans close to my face, attempting to threaten me.
“Know your place servant. What has the world come to when servant and master are reversed? You are deluded. Now tell me, what is wrong with your master?” He raises a hand as if to strike at me with his fist. I do not flinch at his threat.
“Do you doubt my power? Do you think that this monster that kneels could possibly hope to end my life? Let me show you something, human,” I say.
“What?” Confusion flushes his face and that one word is all he can manage.
I reach out with my senses, probing down, reaching for the fires. I get to where my demon’s prison once was, Hell, and I draw power from that place. The demons that are imprisoned there still fill me with their magic that I can naturally use, thanks to the demon that resides within me.
I make my magical assertion and look closely at the villagers. They are slowed to little more than the pace of a dead snail. I take the time to marvel that the complete lack of sound. I extend and harden my nails, turning my hands once again into vicious weapons capable of destruction on a grand scale. Very slowly the villagers begin to move, so I slide my left hand into the soft flesh of their leaders neck. Blood would normally be gushing out of the deep cleft, but time is still moving at about a tenth of its normal speed. I drag my hand free, bringing tiny drops of blood with it, which slowly drift toward to the muddy and icy ground.
I thrust both sets of nails deep into the chest of a burly man stood just behind the as-good-as-dead leader. He does not even flinch, he just stares straight ahead. I lift him and in his eyes I see the pain register, moments after it has been inflict
ed. I toss him to my left knocking a quarter of the slowed posse down to the ground.
Blood is beginning to hit the floor now, and the villagers are slowly taking to defensive stances, though I’m still moving too fast for them to even pose any kind of threat. A woman has half turned to run, so I move up to her and place one hand on her shoulder and the other on her neck and simply prize her head from her body, it is a pity I will never hear any of these people screaming.
I cut the arm from a man who had been holding a long handled hammer and I take the weapon from the severed arm before it hits the floor. Wielding the hammer I swing it at head height, targeting a portly man dressed in finery. I think he was one of the latecomers. The hammer shatters his face and my swing continues through his head, feeling no resistance, to smash into the head of a second person, whose face suffers a similar fate.
I swing the long weapon up into the chin of a young woman, who would be attractive but for the size of her nose. I do not swing through her head, this time. I stop the hammer immediately after it hits. The woman begins to rise up into the air, her head smashed back. I easily dodge a fist, coming far too slowly to hit me.
I must have been stood still long enough for them to get to me. The few remaining villagers I dispatch easily, though some more people come to the aid of the massacred but only add to the pile of bodies. The woman I launched hits the ground, slowly. I have left just two alive, they look like twins, but they could just be brothers. One has fallen to the ground in terror and the other is stood, frozen to the spot, not by magic but by fear. I can taste it clearly on the air. I let the magic go and retract my nails. Sound instantly rushes back to me along with the sound of laboured breathing and the cries of those close to death. I lift the fallen brother up by the scruff of the neck and bring him in close to feed. A voice calls out to stop me.
“Vampire! Do not kill it.”
The Sixth Chapter
- Muzbeth -
89 days until the birth of a god
The 20th day of Winter-Fall, 1537
I turn to see the blackened corpse walking, somewhat shakily, toward me. The voice is dry and cracked, but from the smell of the corpse and way it spoke I know it was once female, though any body parts it once had have been burned off. More of the walking dead; how many of us actually are there?
“Kneel before your Lys-Karalis, dead creature!” I shout to the walking corpse.
“I am not dead, just somewhat incapacitated at the moment,” she replies calmly. She continues to approach us.
“Then I demand to know what you are, and a good reason why I shouldn’t kill you.”
“I am a witch, and you should not kill me because I can help you. I can teach you things. The people of this village betrayed me, and you have stolen my revenge,” she tells me.
I’m guessing she thinks that because I have killed some of them, and she obviously wanted to do that. I like that.
“What makes you think I can learn anything from you? I am Lys-Karalis.”
“Well, for a start, I can make that worthless organism you are holding into a valuable asset if you will allow me to share with you my wisdom.”
“And how would you do that?” I ask, “they both stink of fear. It is a weakness that I do not abide.”
“Yet you ask those that follow you to fear you? That is insane demon logic. However, should you make one of them into a creature of the night such as yourself you would be able to see what the other is up to.”
Now she has gotten closer I can see and smell the raw red flesh under her sore and cracked skin. The fingers that she had lost have grown back and those she did not lose now have a new pink flesh covering them. The flesh is slowly spreading up her arms and legs too. Her muscles are growing back as too are the curves of her hips and her breasts.
“Because they are twins?”
“Yes. And as I’m sure you realise, the foresight that that could give you would be an immense boon.”
“True, but I do not need any more foresight.” I snap the head of the boy I am holding and I feel the warm spray of blood on my face, licking my lips I begin to walk toward the quickly reforming woman. As I pass the other twin I lean down to whisper into his ear.
“Fear me, for I am the destroyer, and I will bring this world to its knees. Now run, before this Karalis changes his mind.”
And that is what he does, and he does not look back. He runs directly for the bridge that crosses the river that swims lazily past the town. I a few hours it will run red with the blood of the dead at my feet.
I continue to walk toward the woman. New flesh now covers most of her body, and only a few places still have the raw redness. Her right breast reforms as we come within reach of each other, the nipple being the last part to re-grow.
She is not exactly beautiful, but she has a grace about her, she has no hair on her body at all, and I notice her finger- and toe-nails have not yet grown back. Now I know that she is not dead; I can see that by the way I watch her chest rise and fall; the dead do not breathe.
My eyes glide down her body, which is fantastic; her breasts are pert and her stomach flat. The lack of hair extends to her groin. Her hips are wide and beautifully curved. My eyes rove further down and I notice a three inch scar on the thigh of her left leg. This puzzles me for it should surely have healed when the rest of her did. I reach out to run my finger along it but she grabs my hand. Her touch is warm, and pleasure shoots up my arm and throughout my body at her touch, stirring my own body into a magically aroused state.
Up close she is not quite as plain as I had previously thought. Her cheek bones are high and pronounced, and she has a small nose and thin but smooth lips.
She brings my hand up to her face and bites my knuckle, not as if to draw blood, but a playful nip. Her other hand snakes down my torso and finds its way into my breeches, where she begins to slide her hand along the length of my magical arousal.
Flashes of memory emerge and a face suddenly flashes before my eyes. It takes a few moments to realise that it is the face of the teenage girl holding the baby that was in my house. She looks terrified and in pain in my memory. I push the sight from my mind, though it makes me stiffen further. This is a woman though, so I do not know why I thought of the young girl with the babe.
Suddenly she draws her hands away to my chest and pushes me over. I land in the muddy dirt of the road, created by the melted snow and the traffic of people, looking up at her. She kneels over my legs and begins unbuckling my belt. Then she reaches up to my blood-stained shirt and begins tearing at it. As she rips my shirt off, something catches my attention and I see Kellum leaning against one of the buildings, he appears to be watching the woman; watching this witch strip me.
Suddenly she backs off, standing once again, leaving me on the ground, exposed. She moves so sensually, which arouses me further. She draws a ring around her in the mud with a toe, then she kneels within the circle she has made and all goes eerily quiet. I stretch out with my mind and vampiric senses to see what she is doing, and my eyes slowly attune to a green light building within her circle. While she is doing whatever she is doing, I decide to remove the remainder of my clothing. I have to wait no longer than a couple moments to see what happens.
As she knelt within the circle, the light had grown considerably, almost blotting out her figure. Now there is a perfect column about twenty feet high of green swirling light, with a vague body at its centre.
All of a sudden the power earths; the column thunders down to about a foot above ground level, and begins to spread along the floor. Just before it touches me, it retracts and the green light is pulled into the witch, who is now standing once again.
As the last of the green light vanishes into her, I observe with a small air of wonder as her hair grows from her head. When it has finished growing it reaches down to her waist, cascading down the front of her body, covering her breasts, her groin is now also clad in pubic hair, which I must say is a little disappointing. Magic is such a useful tool.<
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She strides forward from her circle and straddles me, my erection and her vagina coming within scant inches of each other. She leans in close and kisses me. It is a sensual kiss in which her tongue enters my mouth and plays with my own. Then she quickly stands and regards me, smiling.
“Not so fast vampire, I think you should wait a while for this. It will do you good.”
And then she turns and stalks away down the street, my erection hardens as I observe her buttocks swaying as she walks. I want her. I get up and put on my trousers again, though I don’t bother with the ripped and torn shirt, it is nothing more than rags now.
Kellum comes to stand by me in the middle of the road, and gestures that we should walk down the street after her. The witch enters a two storey building and we begin to follow her in.
It is a wooden construct, which seems to be on the verge of rotting. Above the door is a shingle depicting a pitcher of ale, clasped in a rough hand. I had worked in a publican house when I was a boy, I think. I’d serve drinks and prepare the foods. But I’ve not been in a pub for many years now, according to Kellum, though it only feels like a few days to me. I’ve probably forgotten what ale actually tastes like anyway.
We walk into the pub, pushing its surprisingly sturdy door aside. Inside the structure it is dark, but my advanced senses allow me to see perfectly well in these situations of lacking light. There is a bar along the back wall with three pitchers clustered at one end – they are unclean, probably containing the remnants of this evenings drinking. In the remainder of the room are several chairs arranged lazily around circular tables, which also, I notice, are scattered with drinking bowls. At odd intervals around the edge of the room, stools are placed.
The most striking thing about the room is the smell. I can smell blood, but it smells bitter; it smells vampiric, not human.
“Kellum, are there any vampires about?”
The Vampire's Heart Page 7
