Gerald allowed himself to relax somewhat now that Avraniel was here. One of the rats had healing magic, and he let the rodent get to work on all of the bumps and bruises he’d picked up during the battle while Spot told Avraniel about the fight. It would have been nice if the rat could have helped him with Spot earlier, but it hadn’t been able to get past the blob giant. He’d noticed during the battle that the rats had tried their invisibility, but the blob hadn’t had any eyes. It most likely used magic to sense its prey, so perhaps the rats hadn’t been able to fool it. He could vaguely remember reading about it in a book – blobs like the ones they’d encountered were capable of detecting even the stealthiest intruders, which was yet another reason they made excellent sentries. At least now, if there was trouble, he was confident Avraniel could deal with it. It wasn’t like she would stand by and watch him get eaten or anything although the dog monster did look very hungry. He’d have to feed it later and try to get on its good side.
“Hey, idiot.” Avraniel walked up to him. “Spot told me what happened. Are you okay?”
Gerald was speechless. Avraniel was showing concern for him? Was this real, or was he actually dead? “I… uh… I think so.”
“Good.” Avraniel twitched, and he could tell how hard it was for her to continue. “I’m not good at saying thank you, but you didn’t have to stick your neck out for Spot. A lot of people would have let Spot get mangled while they ran, but you didn’t. You carried him on your back and made sure he got healed.” Her voice softened, and her amber eyes turned gentle for the first time that he could remember. “So… thank you for taking care of Spot. I mean it. I owe you one, so the next time you want something – or someone – dead or burned, tell me. I’ll take care of it.”
“Uh… right. Sure.” Gerald smiled at her and then at Spot. “And Spot has saved me several times already. You could say that I owe him.”
“Even so.” Avraniel grinned. “By the way, you’re no longer an idiot. You’ve been upgraded to… paper pusher.”
“Oh. Um. Yay?”
“Cheer up, paper pusher.” Avraniel smirked. “Do you know where you guys are?” She pointed to the doors at the opposite end of the hall, the ones Gerald hadn’t even thought of trying since he could feel the magic rolling off them.
“No,” Gerald replied. “The rats can sense each other, but we don’t know the layout of this place. Our plan was to try to find everyone else.”
“We’ll get to that,” Avraniel said. “But if the directions I got from one of the guards are right, then we’re not far away from the treasury.”
“Oh.”
Avraniel wrapped one arm around his shoulders. “That’s right, paper pusher. We’re going to find the others, and we’re going to rob these jerks too. And, hey, according to my rat, the others and the treasury are in the same direction. We’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”
Chapter Nineteen
Some people would have been bothered, perhaps even frightened, about being stuck in a strange place alone. Amanda was not one of them. She was not the least bit bothered about being dropped into a pit full of sharks. If anything, she found the entire thing inordinately amusing. True, Timmy and Katie had a pit full of zombie snakes in the castle, which was ridiculous enough, but a pit full of sharks? She had lived a very long time, and although she’d heard several madmen speak of things like this, she had never actually seen one herself, never mind ended up in one.
As she floated in the water, she studied her surroundings. The pit was completely covered in a thick layer of magically reinforced glass. The glass seemed to serve two purposes: it allowed the guards stationed above the pit to watch people get eaten, and it prevented people from escaping. Presumably, anyone teleported into the shark pit would have to face death by either drowning or shark. It was, on further reflection, a fairly horrific way to die. Thankfully, Amanda was an ancient vampire. She couldn’t drown, and she certainly wasn’t about to let a bunch of sharks eat her. However, she would have to be careful. She only had the clothes she was wearing, and she didn’t know where Gerald was. She couldn’t allow the sharks to damage her clothing. It would be utterly uncivilised to walk around naked.
As the first shark swam toward her, Amanda clenched her fists. One punch was all she needed to deal with the first shark, and the swift, brutal demise it suffered – she doubted that she’d ever be able to get all of the blood out of her clothes – was enough to convince the other sharks that she wasn’t the easy prey they were used to. As the sharks circled her uncertainly, she turned her attention to the guards above her. The glass they were standing on was enchanted to increase its toughness and resilience to damage, but it did little to prevent her from reaching into their minds with her magic.
It was child’s play to take the knowledge that she needed from them. In a matter of moments, she had everything she wanted. A frown crossed her lips. Unlike some people – a certain elf came to mind – her magic was not especially destructive in a physical sense, so simply blasting her way to Lord Merton’s chambers was not an option. She would have to take the long way around, which would mean fighting her way past a lot of the guards and the master of this area. It would be so very troublesome. Nevertheless, she would make do. She always had. As the sharks found their courage, she smashed her fists into the glass above her until it shattered. She floated out of the water as the guards fell into the pit.
Oops.
She had hoped to drink a few of them dry to ensure that her magical reserves were full. Unfortunately, the sharks had already begun to do their work. She winced. She sincerely hoped she was not that messy when she fed, but she knew quite well that, at times, she could be. Certainly, Katie and Gerald had seen her at her worst. In any case, this was no great setback. There would be other guards although perhaps not for a while. The guards here had been very clear in their minds that the master of this area was not entirely human, and he did not tolerate the company of other humans save for a few select servants and the other Lords of Magic who dwelt on the island.
She was about to leave when she heard a small squeak. She turned. There was a rat clinging onto the ceiling above her. It was no normal rat. It was one of the ninja rats. How odd. She couldn’t remember having one with her, but they could be surprisingly sneaky. Yet if it had been with her, did that mean it had been in the pit as well? Had she known, she would have made an effort to escape more swiftly.
“Are you all right?” she murmured as the feeding frenzy continued below her. One of the guards managed to swim to the edge of the pit, and she discretely floated over and pushed him back in. She couldn’t have him escaping now, could she? And he’d been bleeding quite heavily. She would have been lucky to get more than a sip or two out of him. The rat’s reply set her mind at ease. “How ingenious. You used your magic to enhance your sword enough to cut a hole in the glass where several panes met and the reinforcement was weakest before using a grappling hook to latch onto the ceiling and pull yourself up while remaining invisible.” She lifted one hand. “Here, let me carry you. You should rest for a while.”
Amanda floated away from the pit and made her way over to the door at the far end of the chamber, the rat perched on her shoulder. She glanced down at her clothes and sighed. There was shark blood and guts all over them, and they were soaked through, clinging to her body. “I suppose I should be grateful that I cannot catch a chill. Otherwise, this would be most unpleasant.”
The rat nudged her. “Impressive. You can locate the other rats? If they are with the others, then finding the other rats should lead us to them.”
Amanda could have used her vampiric powers to do something similar since vampires could sense the presence of living things through both magic and their extraordinarily keen senses. It would have been difficult if she’d only just met the others, but she’d spent enough time around them by now to be quite familiar with the nuances of how they felt to her magic and to her senses. What concerned her at the moment – although concern was,
perhaps, too strong a word – was that she could not sense the presence of any other humans nearby. Clearly, the guards’ thoughts on the ruler of this area had not been wide of the mark.
She tore the door of the chamber off its hinges, for she had neither the patience nor the inclination to spare this place the cost of property damage. Quite frankly, anyone who teleported her into a pit full of sharks deserved to pay for some repairs. The corridor was exactly as it had appeared in the minds of the guards: it was less a corridor and more of a tunnel cut out of the rock beneath the tower. There were also a handful of imps – small, winged demons – skulking about. They turned to face her and postured, teeth and claws bared.
“In the interests of fairness, one monster to another,” Amanda said. “I thought I would offer you the opportunity to run.” The imps replied by leaping at her, their wings beating the air to hasten their charge. “Very well.”
She cut the imps out of the air with a few swift, sure slashes of her rapier. Her nose wrinkled. Their blood had splattered all over the tunnel, and it smelled terrible. If necessary, she could live off demon blood, but the taste was simply abominable. She preferred sweeter blood, like the blood of a comely village virgin or the blood of a gentle healer. She chuckled softly. It would be best if she kept such thoughts to herself. Talk of devouring young maidens inevitably came across as a tad odd, and the company that she now kept would not hesitate to point that out.
“Shall we proceed?” Amanda patted the rat on her shoulder. “I am due for a constitutional, and I imagine that you are not keen to stay here any longer than necessary.” The rat nodded and pulled out a pair of swords. It was evidently more than prepared for trouble. “Mind you, it might be best if you were to render yourself invisible. I am certain you can take care of yourself, but the element of surprise could prove important if we encounter a truly powerful foe.”
Amanda followed the tunnel. She encountered more demons along the way, but they were, as her son would have put it so many years ago, of the useless sort that could do nothing more than delay the inevitable. Despite her resolve to maintain her focus, she found her mind wandering, as it was wont to do from time to time. Perhaps she had been away from Everton for too long. She had heard stories of other ancients whose minds were locked in the past because they refused to engage with the present. Returning to Everton had left her with no choice but to confront both her past and her present.
Her descendant, James, was a fine, young man, a little too uptight perhaps, but certainly a capable leader and member of the Council. He was not yet the unquestioned head of their House, but his father had already begun to cede control to allow James to take charge while he was still in his prime. Amanda had spoken to both of them at length via scrying sphere, and it was good to see that her family’s fortunes had not decline in her absence although James’s foolish attempt to propose to Councillor Winters could definitely have been better handled. Having met the woman – and been punched by her – Amanda was surprised that James’s head was still attached to his shoulders. Of course, her son had not been the most romantically inclined man either, yet he had eventually married well and lived happily.
The House of Winters had always been that way: quick to anger and quick to forgive, and, above all, loyal to those they considered friends and family. She needed to look no further than Vicky’s efforts to help Timmy. Indeed, it must have cost the other woman a great deal of political capital over the years to protect her necromancer friend from the machinations of her predecessor and the other members of the Council. Thankfully, however, her investment, so to speak, had paid off handsomely. The great game between nations had not changed in Amanda’s absence, and Timmy would prove to be a most useful piece for Everton to have on the board.
She also wondered about his apprentice. Amanda had met people with Katie’s shadow magic before. They had been thoroughly unpleasant, the whole lot of them, and prone to bouts of murderous insanity. It was why the Council had been forced to take action centuries ago. Yet the girl seemed free of the madness that had consumed the others, and Amanda wondered how much of it was due to her unconventional upbringing.
The rat on her shoulder made a sound, and Amanda’s thoughts returned to the present. They had arrived at the entrance of an enormous cave, one that had been hollowed out of the rock and stone with magic. Amanda walked through the rough archway and strode toward the centre of the cave. There were demons all around her. Some were almost humanoid, but others were little more than warped, hideous creatures that bore only a faint resemblance to creatures found in the mortal world. A vaguely feline thing prowled behind her. Flame coursed over its body and pitch bled from its eyes as the screams of the damned echoed in the air around it. Most people would have been driven mad with terror then and there. Amanda, of course, was not most people. Indeed, some would argue that she wasn’t a person at all. All of these creatures – and there were a lot of them, including a giant worm beast with the heads of the people whose souls it had devoured protruding from its body – did not bother her so much as lead her to wonder what had so obviously gone wrong in the childhood of the person responsible for bringing them here. Normal people did not surround themselves with freakish hell beasts that gloried in the suffering and woe of the innocent.
“You have done well to get this far.”
Amanda almost rolled her eyes at the tall man in an extravagant cloak of red and black. He walked down an intricate staircase of rock, which appeared step by step beneath him as he descended from a passageway near the top of the cave. What an ostentatious use of magic. It would have been far more efficient to simply have a regular set of stairs. What if he exhausted his magic? Would he be stuck down here? Her lips curled, and she bared her fangs. It was also foolish. What sort of person revealed their magic so quickly? She was often quick to reveal her vampiric nature, but that was merely a ploy since her status as an ancient vampire from an august bloodline rendered her largely immune to the majority of the usual weaknesses of her kind.
“To have escaped the shark pit and defeated so many of my demons, I applaud you.” The man bowed as he finally set foot on the floor of the cave. The steps crumbled to dust that swirled around him. “However, your journey must end here, for you face Lord Darren. Through my veins flows the blood of the mightiest of demons.”
“I see.” Amanda tilted her head to one side. It would explain the way he smelled. He was certainly not fully human, and the obeisance the demons around them showed would only ever have been given to another demon or one chosen by a demon of great power. “If you do not mind my asking, are you half demon?”
Darren’s curled. He was evidently quite proud of his demonic heritage. How amusing. Those with demonic blood almost always either embraced it or reviled it. “I am a scion of demons, woman. I am no mere half blood. I am two thirds demon.”
Amanda blinked. Surely, she had misheard him. “Excuse me? Would you mind repeating that?”
“I am two thirds demon.”
She stared, and then she stared some more. “I am afraid that does not make any sense. How would that work? If both your parents were demons, you would be a full demon. If only one of them was a demon, you would be half demon. And if one of them were half demon and the other a full demon, then you would be three quarters demon. You simply cannot be two thirds demon.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” There was genuine outrage in his voice.
“I believe that I am,” Amanda replied. “Although you could simply be very poor at math.”
Darren snarled. “I was going to talk more, but I no longer feel the inclination to be so merciful.” He gestured at the demons. “Kill her. Make it painful.”
Amanda laughed. “You should step away,” she whispered to the rat on her shoulder. The invisible rodent hustled over to a pillar on the other side of the cave. Beneath her, the earth trembled. He would undoubtedly use his magic to impale her with rock or crush her. However, he was about to receive a rude awakening. “I would not
normally do this,” Amanda said to Darren. “For I believe that a proper lady should never be so inelegant in front of civilised company, but you are hardly civilised company. Thus I may be as inelegant as I wish.” She licked her lips. “You demons fancy yourselves to be monsters. Allow me to show you what a real monster looks like.”
One of the most common misconceptions about vampires was that they were the result of some arcane experiment into immortality or necromancy gone hideously wrong. It wasn’t a bad guess at their origins, given how such things had happened several times in the past and resulted in nightmarish abominations. However, Amanda was one of the oldest vampires in the world – vampires had an alarming tendency to succumb to ennui or internecine strife if given enough time – and she was a daughter of the oldest bloodline in existence, the original bloodline that had birthed the very first vampires. More than all but a handful of others, she understood the true nature of her kind.
Vampires were children of the endless and terrible darkness between worlds. The creatures that lurked underneath Timmy’s castle were one example of what the unfathomable void could produce. Countless years ago, an insane mage had sought to establish a contract with creatures from that place. Unlike Timmy, who actually had a functioning brain in his skull, the mage hadn’t simply wanted to harness the power of the inhuman, god-like beings that dwelt in the emptiness between realms. No, he’d wanted to become one of them. He had welcomed their incomprehensible and utterly inhuman essence into himself.
The creatures of the void had granted his wish. They changed the mage, turned him into something part human and part something else that there were no words to describe. The mage had been the first vampire – the father of all vampires. He had turned others, of course, as he sought out those who could aid him in his quest to further explore and perhaps even conquer the realm that, by all rights, should have been beyond the reach of mortals. Those first followers of his had all manifested the gift he shared differently, for the corruption that filled the mage was still unstable. It was those followers who gave rise to what were now recognised as the other ancient and pure bloodlines.
Two Necromancers, a Dragon, and a Vampire (The Unconventional Heroes Series Book 3) Page 44
