Master In His Tomb

by Jack Holloway

  “Not like that. It’s making me feel sick to me stomach. This isn’t what we are, it never fecking was. Just a sick little trick of a curse that kept us down for five hundred years.”

  I pat her on the back. “I understand more than I can say little one. My people have their own issues with youthful exuberance. It is a sign of our essential goodness that both your sisters and my children grow up and make better choices.”

  She is green around the gills.

  “But if you don’t feel up to this you can wait outside. Emmet and I can undoubtedly deal with this one way or another.” I gesture towards the pony. It seems to find the music as interesting as I do. “someone needs to look after dear… Buttercup.”

  “She’s called Buttons.” She says, then rubs her eyes, plugs her ears and stands up straight, a fine figure of a witch, ready for war. “No. It’s fine. Really. Nan’s always saying we need to sort the Vedyma out sometime so maybe we should make a start now. They’ll have to listen to me with you about and what they’re up to in there makes me feel sick. Gives us all a shitty name.”

  She blows out a haze of mist and rubs her hands together, cocking an ear to one side. “Hemlock’s got the pony. Let’s get this done.”

  We walk through the open gate. Emmet closes it behind us by dropping the cross bar. Thoughtful golem.

  Can’t have runners.

  The bird-witches are swarming around the villagers’ homes. Some walking in widow's weeds holding out apples and oranges to locked windows or doors, whispering in soft voices whose words weave their way into the music, threads of silver in sable black power, pulling their prey out of hiding places.

  Others are perched upon T-shaped crosses from which wires hang that thread their way throughout the streets. A transmission system that is no longer transmitting. They are the older sisters. Their ethereal humanoid beauty changed by power and age into something else, more avian but no less beautiful. Feathers for hair and hollow bones. A deviant evolution of humanity from elements of the predatory corvids that plays to alternative threads of existence.

  They glide down to any door that opens to assist their more human family with any stronger villagers.

  The very oldest are atop the houses themselves. Huge carrion crows sitting and watching as lines of children are led to the town centre, a cobble paved square surrounded by worn shop fronts, metal shutters pulled down where the youngest witches who could pass for my friend Ariadne or Aunty Clem at a pinch wear away at clumsy warding signs and cold iron locks with silken charms and sweet words.

  The witches have been ignoring us as we move into town, they are busy and we are careful. We take slow measured steps and keep our eyes averted from the worst of it, hidden within a blanket of cantrips. The sisters of the Vedyma are too caught up in their hunt to care if they catch a blurry glimpse at the edge of their vision.

  Herbivores would have noticed us by now. Eye position, you know.

  The cawing, scratching beat swells louder the closer we get towards the centre. I suspect that once inside the settlement, the chief witch made up a keystone charm, some poor fool, generally a local dignitary, held on the edge of death till the hunt is over, and then finally allowed to pass on having served a horrible purpose.

  There are sharp claws pulling at my mind, at our cloak of hiding, dark wings fluttering and red bloody beaks ready to strike. Ariadne will be having it worse, she is holding up well. I am proud of her.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  And then we are to the source of the beat. At the centre of the square there is a wooden stage set up for some yokel clave of players, miscellaneous stage props adorning one side ready for the evening’s entertainment, now standing forlorn amongst a less salubrious form of fun.

  One of the players is still in place though, he is bent in half, floating above a cauldron in which bubbles something worse than the contents of the moat. His ridiculous pointy tipped shoes stick out at an unnatural angle, directly against his head, rotating in time to the rhythm of the witches’ hunt.

  A poor choice. The Mayor would have been preferable.

  We push our way through the lines of enthralled dancing children and smiling glamorous witches with little effort. I clamber up the stage to stand beside the pot. “Ready?”

  “As ever Master Vampire” grinds Emmet.

  “Sure.” A single curt word from Ariadne.

  I let the shadows in which we have sheltered drop, Ariadne does the same. The air is cold and smells of copper.

  “Ahem. Ladies?” Nothing.

  Emmet grips the ever-dying player and pushes him into the pot.

  The beat stops. The music stops. The danse macabre stops. Pupil less eyes twist in sinuous avian fashion our way from below, above and all around.

  Children dancing in the streets with the younger witches pause in place, then scream and dodge into open doors or cellars held open by friendly neighbours suddenly able to move. Those who have been reaching through half-pried windows for a pale sisterly hand are pulled back and the windows slammed with accompanying screech as long dextrous fingers meet wood and metal edges.

  The witches shimmer towards the stage and turn to me. Those above, lean forward, holding themselves in place with taloned claws. They hiss.

  “Want to give it a try then, Ariadne? I believe we have their attention.”

  Ariadne takes a deep breath. “Thanks Lumpy. I’ll do me best.”

  I nod. I have always been a believer in second chances, one of the benefits of power I suppose. The weak have to act fast, act once, or the moment is gone.

  But as they say, I am not an idiot, I will be ready if my companion fails. “Keep hold of the cauldron if you would be so kind, Emmet. Be ready.”

  My golem friend nods his great stone head like one of the great statues of Easter island, as the witches shiver and shift closer to the wooden stage. The hissing is now constant. The menace palpable.

  Ariadne opens her mouth to speak. Then stops. A look of incredulity passing over her pretty face.

  “Lumpy?”

  “Yes Ariadne.”

  “Just remembered summit.”

  “Yes Ariadne?”

  “I don’t speak Russian.”

  All eyes on her. She manages to stutter out “Hello... fellow...”

  There is a whoosh as the chief witch lands, bone and sinews flexing as her reverse jointed legs bend to absorb the impact.

  “Witches,” finishes Ariadne. Jeers from the assembled Vedyma silenced by a gesture from the chief.

  “Vampire?” the chief witch is ancient and speaks English. Her face has barely a trace of humanity to it. Sharp beak, black bird eyes, her shoulders powerful with flight muscles and her robes interlaced with glossy feathers so that it is impossible to separate the one from the other.

  Her hands hooked inwards on heavy wings grip charms against my kind. Beauty comes in many forms and this being is beautiful and terrible. Nan summoning the past. The Fae Queens in all their terrible wonder.

  The disconcerting thing is her voice is that of an angel. Fluting and sweet rather than the harsh rasp I was expecting.

  “You have good eyes, Madam.”

  The hiss from the crowd grows louder, a half dozen of the younger witches slide to form a half circle around their chief ready to lend her their own power. “Then I am not talking to you, creature. You should not speak around your betters. I will speak to you part-sister. Explain your error. You have brought a damned vampire here, when we are feeding?”

  “Least she speaks English I guess" says Ariadne sotto voce. “well you’ve got me right there Aunty. And I’m real sorry to have brought the...”

  She turns to stare at me. Face mock serious. “Ugly old blood sucking freak...”

  I give her my best ‘grandfather’s disapproval.’

  “But...” she continues. “We needed to make a quick pit-stop to pick up that big... hunk of stone you can see with the cauldron from hereabouts and now we just want to get back
to where we belong, and you seem to have moved the forest and…” she is looking around and her attention keeps being drawn to the buildings.

  There are maybe fifty of the Russian witches surrounding the stage who she should be paying attention to, winning over to our cause. Instead her green eyes seek out the scared eyes peeking from inside buildings and catches glimpses of parents holding their children close.

  The actor’s pot bubbles, Emmet looks suspiciously at a pointy tipped shoe that floats to the surface, followed by another.

  “We can just…. leave you sisters to your...”

  Oh dear. I had thought this might happen.

  “...” Ariadne is trying to finish her plea, but she seems to be caught between glancing at the terrified families trying to shore up their defences in the brief pause our intervention has provided and the ridiculous clown shoes sticking vertically up out of the bubbling pot, held steady by Emmet’s stony hands.

  The shoes are green with little bell spurs. They jingle a little.

  “Ah fucks sake. Why did you have to kill the fecking clown?”

  The coven head opens her beak and flares her feathers. “What?”

  “And this. This is just fecking disgusting. Look at you all. What does it say to the world when you lot do this sort of shite? We don’t have to, that’s all been done with for hundreds of fecking years.”

  The hissing stops. The chief witch draws herself up to her full height, wings spreading. “Idiot Child. Did your Nan’s last messenger not spread the word clearly enough?”

  Ariadne shakes her hair out of its habitual topknot and straightens her hat. “Feck it. You up for this Lumpy?”

  The witches are frozen in time for a moment as they prepare to pounce. The effort involved is considerable, but this is important.

  “Proud of you Ariadne.”

  “Yeah, yeah yeah.”

  22

  Warfare

  It begins.

  I flick out my index finger and Emmet immediately hurls the huge iron pot and its contents directly at the chief witch.

  She sees it coming and strains her considerable will against my strength.

  Pandemonium is set loose in those fragments of a moment. The chief witch breaks my hold on her coven, which makes me wince and lose my hold on the others. It was slipping anyway, that sort of charm never holds long.

  She thrusts herself out of the way of the oncoming juggernaut with a great sweep of her dark wings but the pot slams into half a dozen of her attendants, and the stage beneath them, with a crunch of splintering bone and a scatter of flying feathers.

  Seeing this the susurrations of the gathered witches transform into a howl of bestial fury and they launch themselves at us, We are nearly overwhelmed by a tidal wave of battering wings and razor-sharp claws and stabbing beaks.

  The stage begins to collapse, splintered by the pot. Spells and curses are flying. Emmet grabs at harrying flights of dark robes and catches handfuls of feathers rather than limbs as shrieking howls of laughter erupt from the swirling mass harrying us from above. Malice, hatred. Ariadne’s people have nothing on their elder siblings.

  Ariadne dances around splintering wood and claws, punching back when she can with flaming bolts and withering hexes of wondrous skill.

  Flights of arrows hiss out from the murder which I deflect into the witches own ranks, but they are hardy creatures and immune to their own poisons. An arrow nicks my arm and I watch the flesh around the cut fizz with green death.

  “Irrelevant.”

  I have underestimated the difficulty of this fight. There are too many dimensions at play. The witches are creatures of the air and I am a creature of the earth. They understand verticality. Taloned hands erupt through the wood below me and the remnants of the stage collapses as claws grasp at me from all around. I swat them away and then hold them in place, pinned with the deflected arrows, before throwing the whole into the swarming array of witch monsters, bowling them over.

  My view of the wider battle encumbered by the stage falling down around me I instruct Emmet to keep Ariadne safe as best he can and leap for one of the flying witches. It is time to reduce their advantages and for that I need to concentrate.

  I am faster than they expect and do not move as they do, natural grace and flight is no match for power and speed in the right circumstances, and the runes under my skin allow me to grab one of the large older witches despite her hexes and curses of evasion. She tries a more direct approach, to peck out my eyes, before I tear off her head and use her blood to concoct a gaseous poison to end this battle before we lose any of ours.

  The witch’s body dissolves in my hands as I land, far from the stage, opposite a butchers which seems appropriate. Green gas billows from her remains. The nearest witches begin to stagger, double up, skin sloughing away. I chuckle and pull others close in to me, those in the air easiest to move. A chain reaction as they follow their sister into dissolution.

  “Albrecht. Not that way. Not that way.”

  Why is Emmet. Oh. Ariadne.

  Witches are witches are witches. She is far enough away for now, but the gas is spreading and those witches I cannot reach are spinning away encased in my curse, pushing themselves from buildings towards…

  Right.

  I sweep both my hands up and push the green toxins up into the clouds above in a whoosh of power. Exhilarating. And dear young Ariadne will be safe to continue her own struggle with Emmet’s efficient protection.

  But in so doing I have lost track of my main opponent and a heavy weight drops on me from above. Singing in that beautiful voice and hooking her claws into the dead skin and bones of my back the Chief Witch protects her own, in a mirror of my own actions.

  I twist around desperately, ignoring the rents in my flesh cut by those razor talons. It is, after all, only flesh.

  The remaining witches join their chief’s song as she maintains a grim grip , power coursing from each talon and funnelled into my poor dust and bone. Wards from three millennia begin to burn away under the assault. I cannot panic, it is literally impossible, but I accept that this may be an enormous inconvenience as I cannot get my hands on her nor can I latch on to her with my other abilities as long as her sisters shield her.

  I ponder a way out of this as the Chief Witch’s song raises to a crescendo and she pushes us upwards towards the clouds.

  “Dead thing. Dead Thing. Dead Thing. DIE!” She howls, wings straining against something as we ascend into the monster haunted clouds.

  Now that is interesting. She is going to sacrifice herself for her sisters. There are things gathering above us which are as far beyond her as… focus. I cannot survive in that maelstrom any more than she can, not for long. The only thing holding her is…

  Dear Ariadne. She is still in the splintered ruins of the stage, back to the cauldron, defended by Emmet and chanting some witchly spell that is binding our mutual enemy to the earth. It cannot work in full as she is alone against maybe thirty of her cursed sisters, but once again I have reason to thank my stars for the companions fate gives me. Emmet identifies the issue, joins the fray, throwing the chanting crow things into walls, crushing them into the ground, staggering under blows from a dozen assailants and moving with speed I would not have thought possible for a creature of stone.

  In the time my friend provides I prepare a special trick that an old priest of Cybele taught me in Ephesus. For anyone else it would be terminal. Damnable witch her claws are hooked in my ribs… but for me it will merely mean a decade or so of recuperation. The world may have to wait.

  The things above swirl and tentacles reel down to grasp us as I…

  There is a crack and the witch’s claws spasm in my back. Palpable discomfort.

  She is not done, yet. From the wreck of her mouth she pushes her face close to mine, eyes wild, and hisses a name with unfathomable will and a splatter of bloody saliva.

  “Adam.”

  It is an odd choice of final word. I would have expected a deat
h curse or a last spasm to throw me up to the Cloud things. Those dark, glossy eyes lose focus, and her grip loosens.

  She slips away from me, her wings outstretched and pulled this way and that.

  The clouds are so close so I…

  No need. No need. Now I am falling. Blessed gravity. Accelerating from above like Lucifer from the sadly curtailed heavens. A thousand feet, five hundred. Beside me, and a little below, the chief witch falls, her body limp, her head a shattered wreck. A trail of bright red blood trails from the back of her skull like that final curse.

  A rifle shot? Who would be so bold?

  Oh yes, the ground. In this state little I could…

  I land with a crunch just outside the town, close to where Hemlock and Buttons are waiting. A few feet to the left and a outcropping of brush would have broken my fall, as it is, a raised rock has cracked my skull making everything hazy. The coven mistress lands atop me to add injury to injury. Wings… resistance

  I mutter a charm to repair my broken body, the bones and flesh knitting together much like a comfortable jumper, and I pull myself out from under the dead coven mistress.

  I will be picking feathers from my clothing and skin for days.

  Yet I have respect for her sacrifice. She was a brave woman.

  The remnants of the coven are flying in all directions from the walled town, as headless as their leader, screeching and howling their pain and malice. A few stiffen in flight and drop as they flee, an echo of their sister from what feels like a century ago. I close her eyes even though she would no longer see.

  What am I doing?

  I take a moment to sit down and catch my thoughts which are currently flitting around me like mosquitoes around a water bison, leaning against the rock that impacted my skull. My wards burn under my skin as they draw power from the deaths around about, over the millennia, to renew themselves.

  This is as old as I have ever felt. Minutes pass. I do not move, the rock is pleasingly solid. I could stay here forever. Perhaps I was never anywhere else?

  But life has a way of catching up with you. There is a buzzing in my head as I shake myself back to consciousness. Emmet and Ariadne, Buttons and Hemlock are approaching from the gates. Emmet has two unconscious witches, one under each arm, bundled up with rope.