“I am no sir, and you’re a vampire. I thought it would be prudent to ask.” Timmy’s brows furrowed. “I’ve met other vampires before, and necromancy can usually be used to identify the approximate age and strength of things, including vampires, which aren’t exactly alive.” He sent another pulse of magic through his zombie wyvern. “I can’t get a good read on you.”
“I imagine it is due to a combination of my bloodline, my age, and my magic.” Amanda pursed her lips in thought. If she had a fan, Timmy was sure she would have tapped her lips with it. “I must confess that I am not entirely sure of my exact age. It has, I am sure you can imagine, been a very long time since my age has mattered. If I had to narrow it down to the closest century, I would place my age at… two thousand years old, I think.”
Timmy almost fell off the zombie wyvern. “Are you serious?”
“I am dead serious.” Her lips twitched, and she giggled. “Get it? Dead serious?”
Timmy snickered. “I’ve heard that one before, actually. I used to use it a lot until Katie threatened to whack me with my own shovel for overusing it. But two thousand years old? You’re almost the same age as the Eternal Empire.”
“My, what an impolite thing to say. My family was one of several families that ruled territory that would one day come to form one of the key provinces of the Eternal Empire. For reasons I would prefer not to go into, I became a vampire. The rest of my family, however, remained human. Perhaps it was mere sentimentality, but I chose to guide my descendants, often from the shadows. When the Eternal Empire rose, I counselled my family to join them and assume a place of power rather than be swept aside or exterminated since I was not nearly strong enough to fight off the Eternal Empire, even with my family’s aid. However, as the winds of history and political fortune changed, it became clear that a new course was in order. If the Eternal Empire would no longer support and protect my family, then I would find someone who would.”
“Everton.”
“Indeed. My family was one of the first to take up the cause of independence. The emperor at the time was a fool, more in love with drink and women than with the business of ruling. Worse, he was also vain, paranoid, and extremely powerful. The deaths of dozens of noblemen and noblewomen could be laid at his door, members of my family amongst them. If he alone had been the problem, I would have tried to organise an assassination. Alas, his successors looked to be no different. Everton was a province of the Eternal Empire at the time, and it was a place where my family already had substantial holdings. When the emperor’s foolishness and bloodthirstiness could be ignored no longer, my family decided to support the cause of independence.”
“So James was right. You must know all about Everton’s magical defences.”
“Ah, so that is why my descendant sent you.” Amanda ran one finger through the air. Wisps of crimson and violet light trailed in its wake. Timmy would bet his favourite shovel that she had some form of magic that dealt in illusions. Until he knew what it was and how it worked, he would have to be careful. “Fortunately, those fools – those dead fools – at the Nameless Citadel had no idea of who I was. They were far more interested in running their experiments on an ancient vampire, one who did not have an entire coven to protect her. They learned nothing about Everton from me, and anything they did learn died with Tithion.”
“How did they catch you?” Timmy asked.
“Yes,” Gerald said. The bureaucrat looked a bit green around the gills, but he was holding up well after dosing himself with several potions to combat airsickness. He was, however, almost certainly regretting his decision to eat so much food although it had been delicious. “I… I saw you fight earlier. I have a hard time believing they were able to overpower you.”
“I was careless, I suppose.” The vampire reached for the gourd of wine they’d brought and took a long sip of it. It was, she claimed, a reasonable substitute for blood until she could find someone to drink from. She wasn’t hungry yet – she’d drunk her fill at the Nameless Citadel – but she had asked for volunteers just in case she found herself feeling a little… peckish. Not surprisingly, she hadn’t gotten any. Timmy, of course, had plenty of livestock at the castle, and there would be plenty of other options once they were safely in Everton. “Do you know there are poisons that can affect vampires, even ancient ones?”
“Fascinating.” Gerald pulled a notebook out of thin air and prepared to write in it. “Could you tell me more?”
“Have you any idea what you are asking me?” Amanda raised one eyebrow. “Poison is how I ended up in the Nameless Citadel.”
Timmy glanced back at Gerald. “Believe me, he doesn’t. Amanda, you don’t have to worry about him poisoning you. It’s not the sort of thing he would do. But, Gerald, vampires are largely immune to poison, and that’s doubly or triply true for ancient vampires. It’s why they don’t always bother to take precautions against poison. Given that, no vampire in their right mind would ever tell you what poisons they are vulnerable too.”
“I wonder, do you know what poisons might be able to affect me?” Amanda’s voice sharpened, and hints of crimson and violet bled into her blue eyes. “How convenient, Timmy.”
“Easy there.” Timmy waved one hand. “I’m not an idiot. Picking fights with ancient vampires is an excellent way to end up dead. I have to live long enough to stop at least one serious attempt to overthrow me by Katie. If I die now, she’ll probably bring me back as a spirit, ghost, or zombie, so she can complain about not being able to defeat me herself.”
Amanda’s gaze drifted over to the other zombie wyvern, which was under Katie’s control. “Your apprentice is a most precocious child.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Timmy moved his head back and forth. Long flights always gave him a sore neck. “So they poisoned you.”
“It would be more accurate to say they poisoned my food. They must have been watching me for quite some time since they knew I preyed primarily on criminals.” She bared her teeth. “It is usually so much more convenient since no one ever misses them, and I like to think I am doing the world a favour. Naturally, they are not as delicious as a virgin in the very flower of her youth, but virgin blood has a tendency to come with irate parents and angry villagers waving around stakes and pitchforks.”
“I know all about angry villagers.” Amanda gave him a questioning look. “I’m a necromancer, remember? We’re maybe the only people in the world who have more reason to worry about angry villagers than vampires. Well, I guess there are werewolves, but I think we edge them out percentage wise when it comes to death via angry villagers although they’ve got us beat in terms of sheer numbers.”
“How could I have forgotten? I do remember one necromancer. He was not a particularly pleasant fellow although he was very cheerful about his wickedness – right up until the angry villagers got to him. He screamed a lot before the end, and the end was a very long time in coming. In any case, they must have turned my prey’s blood almost entirely into poison. Quite frankly, I am amazed the fellow could walk. It was enough to knock me out, and they were able to secure a sufficient number of strength and magic suppressors to make escape impossible. They used a specially made prison cell to hold me combined with starvation and exsanguination to lessen my powers.”
“How horrible.” Katie had told Timmy all about the stakes they’d found driven into her body. He could only imagine the torture they’d put her through, and he didn’t feel the least bit of sympathy for Tithion or any of his henchmen. They’d been happy to poke the bear. They couldn’t complain when the bear turned around and bit their faces off. “Why didn’t you have a coven?”
“Do I look like a megalomaniac to you?”
“A little bit, yes. But I thought that covens were customary amongst ancient vampires. You’re not the first ancient vampire I’ve met, and all of the others had sizeable covens.” He left it unsaid that he’d been forced to wipe out one of those covens after they had made the mistake of trying to break int
o the castle to turn Katie into a vampire. Apparently, the magic within her made her an ideal candidate to accept the dark gift of vampirism from their leader. Honestly, going after Katie was not acceptable.
“Please, boy. You’ve never met a vampire like me before.” Amanda leaned toward him. “I have no interest in covens.” Her gaze grew distant. “I had one a long time ago. It went less than well.”
“Oh?” Timmy had never had a chance to talk to an ancient vampire this much before. The last time he’d encountered one, he’d been busy robbing what he’d thought was an empty tomb. It had not been empty, and the ancient vampire had not been pleased. It was a good thing that he hadn’t brought Katie along for that particular adventure since he’d barely managed to escape the ancient vampire and his coven alive. Alas, he’d been forced to collapse the entire tomb on them with his magic, so he hadn’t made it out with all of the treasure he’d pilfered. Oh well. It was better to live to fight another day. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that running a coven is a great deal of hard, thankless work.” Amanda gave an utterly inelegant snort and flicked one hand out in irritation. “You have to make fledglings. Then you have to watch over and guide them until they are old enough to not make a complete mess of everything. Of course, despite your best efforts, some of them shall inevitably attempt to overthrow you, and you shall have no choice whatsoever except to set all of them on fire and pin their burning hearts to a wall with freshly cut wooden stakes as a warning to all of the others that crossing you is an exceedingly bad idea that can only end in horrible, permanent death!”
Amanda’s voice had risen steadily through her tirade, and both Timmy and Gerald were openly staring. She coughed and put on her most demure expression. “Or so I have been told.” Her jaw clenched. “It is, I am afraid, simply not worth the trouble.”
“Okay.” Timmy looked away and made a mental note to avoid the subject of covens in the future. “If it’s anything like having an apprentice, I can understand where you’re coming from. Katie is a handful, and there’s only one of her. I can’t imagine trying to raise a whole gaggle of apprentices at the same time.”
“It is not fun, I assure you.” Amanda’s eyes sharpened and turned to the horizon. “Dawn is breaking. Shall we set down for the day?”
Timmy considered their position. “I doubt that they’ve followed us this far, and I think we could all use a break. If they are following us, it’ll be safer to move at night. Gerald also looks like he’s about to throw up.”
The tall man had put in a mighty effort to last this long without having to use a paper bag or a bucket, but the potions he’d taken appeared to be wearing off.
“Hold on, Gerald. We’ll be on the ground in a couple of minutes. You can either take more of those potions you’ve got, or you can throw up – whichever one works better for you.”
* * *
Timmy breathed an audible sigh of relief as the familiar silhouette of his castle loomed on the horizon. Oh, he was confident about his abilities, but there was nothing quite like being home, especially when home came with defences that even the Council – sans Vicky and her ridiculously overpowered magic – would have trouble breaking through. And wasn’t it a pretty sight? Maybe it was the necromancer in him talking, but Black Tower Castle was the best castle in the world. It was built on a massive outcrop of rock, more of a mountain really, which jutted high into the air. It had all those towers and gigantic, suitably imposing walls. The whole area had this wonderful air of deadliness and malevolence about it. Even the sunlight seemed less aggravatingly cheerful, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he sensed the familiar and terrible power of the things that lived underneath the castle.
As Lord of Black Tower Castle, Timmy could call upon the power of the things that lived underneath the castle, provided he was close enough and used all of the correct rituals, which meant that as long as he was in the castle and had enough time to prepare, he had access to almost unlimited magic. Of course, he had to be careful. A mistake could very easily kill him – or drive him utterly insane before his soul was consumed by any number of thoroughly unpleasant trans-dimensional horrors of apocalyptic power. He frowned. He’d have to push Katie a tad harder. He was quite certain she would one day be able to handle more of their inhuman power than he could due to her affinity for darkness and shadows.
He’d also have to research her magic’s ancestry even more to avoid any unfortunate… mistakes. What he knew of her magic was already fairly disturbing. Insanity and family killing seemed to be unusually common in people with her magic, but Katie hadn’t shown any signs of going down that road. No, any oddities she did have were quite normal for a necromancer-in-training. It was a good thing too. She was already diabolically clever. He’d have his work cut out for him if she turned out to be a homicidal maniac too. He might even have trouble making it through the year. There had even been one person with her magic who’d taken insane to a whole new level and tried to cast a spell that would permanently shroud the entire world in the darkness of the dead of night. Thankfully, one of Vicky’s ancestors had dealt with the fellow – a radiant lance of blessed light to the spine could fix so many problems.
“You mentioned something about my castle being a shrine when you last visited,” Timmy said. “Can you tell me more?” He might as well find out. The records the castle had about its origins were incomplete. The intact records only went back two or three centuries. The older records were either missing or illegible due to being soaked in blood and some weird kind of goo that Sam believed originated from a different species of otherworldly monster, which did not bode well for his predecessors. It would not surprise him at all if some of the castle’s previous owners had ended up in the belly of some nightmarish horror.
“I shall do my best to recall. Ah, yes. It would have been shortly after the formation of Everton when I was still a member of the Council.” Amanda’s tapped her lips with one finger. “Perhaps I should have taken Robert’s suggestion and written more things down since my memory is far from infallible unless I use my magic on myself. But even that is not without some risk since a mistake could leave me trapped in my own mind.” She chuckled. “Robert was a smart a man. I do miss him now and then.” She shook her head. “Where was I? Yes, Black Tower Castle was not actually a castle then. I was passing by when I noticed a shrine had been built on top of the outcrop. I decided to fly up there and investigate.”
“You can fly?”
“Flight is an ability that some ancient vampires acquire. I accomplished it earlier than most on account of my august bloodline. However, I am not as fast in the air as something like a wyvern or a dragon, which is why I am up here with you and not following in your wake.” Amanda’s brows furrowed. “The shrine had been built on the summit, but there were stairs leading deep into the rock itself. I found an elaborate cave system with vast caverns and lightless chasms that delved down into the very roots of the world. I would have explored more thoroughly, but I was accosted by cultists and… things for which the language of men has no name. I decided to retreat when the magic within the chasms stirred like a dragon awakening.”
“The magic you sensed must have belonged to the things that live underneath the castle.” Timmy noticed Amanda’s curiosity and continued. “Ah, they’re basically trans-dimensional, god-like beings that are here to destroy the world, enslave humanity, and do a whole lot of other extremely unpleasant stuff. There are a few of them underneath the castle, well, bits and pieces of a few of them since nobody has been dumb enough to summon them completely into this world yet, and I certainly don’t plan to. Lesser members of their species also hang around the castle. My friend Sam is one of them. You’ll meet him if you ever venture down into the kitchens at night. He’s big on midnight snacks and cake.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Amanda gestured at him with one hand. “You don’t mind being friends with… something like that?”
“I don’t think yo
u’re in a position to judge, considering the fact that you’re an ancient vampire who eats people.” Timmy laughed at the scowl she gave him. “Sam is fine. He’s not out to destroy the world. Most of them aren’t, actually. He likes cake too much, and most of his kind is happy enough devouring the occasional bandit or assassin. Besides, if I wasn’t using their power for necromancy, you can bet that somebody else would be using it for something far worse.” He thought back to Lord Taylor and the gigantic monstrosity he’d summoned. “The things that live underneath my castle might even have broken free by now if their power was allowed to build up too much. The way things are works well for everybody.”
“What a remarkably blasé way to look at things, but perhaps it is for the best. The cultists I encountered were led by a most unusual man.” Amanda’s lips curled in distaste. “I do believe that he was thoroughly insane. He tried to attack me, and he sprouted several additional arms and legs. He also grew more eyes. It was… odd. His fellow cultists were not far behind in joining him in his altered state, and the creatures with them were even less human. I considered having the Council cleanse the place, but I was worried about what we might inadvertently unleash if we attacked directly. The last I had heard, and this was still very long ago, the cultists had wiped themselves out. I considered it a problem that had solved itself.”
Timmy considered everything she’d said. He’d have to take another look through the castle’s records again. “It would definitely explain some of the things that I’ve seen in the basement.”
“The basement?”
“My castle was built on top of the cave system. There are several main passages that lead down into the basement, which is what we call the cave system. We’ve converted some of the caves for our use, but there are things down there that even I would be better off avoiding. There are a lot of ruins down there too. I might even be able to find the original stairs you followed if I look hard enough.” He shrugged. “I’ll ask Sam and his friends to search for it since they’re much safer in the deeps than we are.” He puffed up with pride. They were now close enough to the castle for Amanda to appreciate it. “Here we are. What do you think?”
Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3) Page 25
