by Garon Whited
“What,” I asked, “is so important you have to interrupt me as I’m about to start a murder spree?”
“The murder spree,” he replied. “The spree, itself. I know how hurt you are. No one knows it better. You’re enraged.”
“That’s not the word I’d use,” I told him. “They have wounded a terrible beast and entirely failed to run.”
“Yes. You are hurt. You have a cold, empty place, a hole in your heart so large you can’t help falling into it.”
“That’s closer,” I admitted. “What’s it to you?”
“I know you have it in you to be a better man than this. Killing a bunch of worshippers and soldiers won’t bring Bronze back. All it will do is continue a cycle of violence that has run for thousands of years between the Lord of Light and the nightlords. You already know it, because I do. Here’s a chance to show everyone—including the Lord of Light—that you want to end the conflict. You can use this. You can make Bronze’s destruction mean something.”
“Are you trying to be my conscience?”
“Someone has to. It’s not like you have a cricket with an umbrella on your shoulder.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Yes?”
“Not valid, but interesting. See, I don’t think you’re my conscience.”
“I’m trying to be.”
“No. I think you’re my fear. I think you’re one fear in particular, actually.”
“And what would that be?”
“My fear of being less than wonderful. My fear of never quite living up to my potential. I got a lot of guff from family, school, all that stuff when I was younger, always telling me to try harder, to learn more, to go above and beyond, to exceed expectations, and so forth. I think you’re my idealized me, the one I can never be no matter how hard I try.”
“Even if that’s true,” he argued, “I can still be a good example. Like a conscience, I can motivate you to be a better person. Maybe not a perfect person, but better than,” he looked me up and down and gestured at me, “this.”
“You could,” I agreed, “except for one thing.”
“Name it and I’ll find a way to help you.”
“I don’t want your help. I don’t want to be motivated. I don’t want to be afraid of not living up to my potential. I’m becoming more and more comfortable with telling the world to go to hell while I go do what I want to do.”
“Ah, I see. You’d rather I stayed quietly in the basement?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but you won’t stay quiet. This little visit proves it. You’ll still bother me from down there.” I gripped Firebrand’s hilt more tightly. “I have to face my fear.”
Firebrand sprayed flames at him. He ducked under the flames, rolling forward, but I kicked him, slamming him back against the wall. Even as he hit the wall, Firebrand set him alight. He screamed and rolled, but not far. I skewered him as he rolled, spearing Firebrand through his back and nailing him face-down to the floor. He clawed at the floor, still on fire.
“I’m hurt,” I shouted, over his screams, kicking him viciously, “more than even you can understand, because you’re too perfect! And I’ve reached the point where I don’t give a damn!”
I kicked and stomped him again and again until his hands and arms were useless. Then I beat him with Mikkel’s wooden sword, ruthlessly, even viciously, until he died.
The flames expired as he crumbled into black sand, divided down into dust, and disappeared into nothingness.
The two men in the mouth of the tunnel weren’t magicians, probably not even wizards. They were pawns, sent with magical devices to kill something too powerful for mortals to face. They threw down their useless wands and clutched their medallions, praying to the Lord of Light for the safety of their bodies and souls.
He didn’t answer.
I once killed people by accident with a reflexive explosion of tendrils. My tendrils, immaterial though they are, can affect matter. They can be used to pull or to push, obviously. They can also be used to cut. Sharper than broken glass, finer than the edge of a razor, they can slash. No one of them can exert great force, so no one of them can cut deeply… but there are many of them, so many of them.
If you slice all around the neck, down to the bone, then slash down both sides of the spine—be sure to separate it from the ribs!—you can grab the lowest point of the spine, break it from the pelvis, and pull the whole spine out like the plastic pull-cord on easy-open packaging.
Done correctly and quickly, the head will see its own body before unconsciousness sets in.
However, I should add that this is a relatively fragile thing, the skull-and-spine combination. It really isn’t suitable for beating someone to death. The head is too soft because of the skin and hair; it doesn’t make a good weapon. Plus, the spine comes apart far too easily. But the horror on the victims’ faces is worth the effort, in my opinion.
Once I shattered the spine-and-skull flail, I fell back on more basic tools. Fingers, talons, teeth, and tendrils.
The remains were broken bone, granules of flesh, and some bodily fluids.
I knelt at the head of the Kingsway and wept bloody tears, each line vanishing into my dark, dead skin as quickly as it appeared. The hole inside was no smaller. It reached just as deep as before. There was an empty place inside me so large nothing could fill it, and so I wept.
How long was it before my eyes fell upon the useless wands? Seconds? Minutes? How long is a second when your soul is torn in two? All I know is I noticed the empty sticks that were once wands. They acted like a crystal in a saturated solution, transforming tears into something terrible.
I descended through the tunnel of the Kingsway, feeling a coldness, the deep roots of an icy rage in my belly. There were no fires, no warmth, no blasts of white-hot fury. There was only the cold and the emptiness and I welcomed it, for it numbed a pain vaster than any I ever knew.
Out of the mouth of the dragon came death, and hell came with him.
I stalked through the city, coldly, boldly, uncaring, walking to and through the enemy lines. They didn’t have magical protection for everyone. They already prayed or cast spells of protection for knights, yes, and for priests and officers, but for the rest, all they could do was hope they didn’t meet me in person.
They met me in person.
I didn’t bother with blood, except as an incidental. I didn’t bother with actually stopping the life functions of the meat, either. All I wanted was the lives of everyone who took up arms for the Church of Light. I didn’t care who they were or why they were here or where they came from. They were here. They were fighting on the side of the people who kidnapped my granddaughter and killed Bronze. To me, they were already dead inside. I made my perception a reality. So I walked to the front lines, ignoring my own men, and walked through the enemy.
The twenty or so men who held the street died. Those without protection fell immediately to the touch of my tendrils as I jerked their lives loose, snatched them away, poured them down into the never-full pit of a vampire’s hunger. The two who were protected I killed with my hands.
At another perimeter station, the wizard screamed and pointed at me as I approached. I deflected his spell, slashed one darkness-gauntleted hand through his neck, and was mildly surprised when his neck parted. I expected only to break his neck, not decapitate him. Startled though I was, I still didn’t break stride.
On around, position by position, I worked along the edge of their territory. One knight of light or whatever he was lowered a lance and charged me. I stuck a tendril into his horse’s head and sent a thought down it: STOP.
The horse skidded to a halt and stood there, a perfect impression of a statue. The knight, on the other hand, nearly came out of his saddle. He dropped his lance and attempted to dismount. I drew Firebrand, brought it down and around, slashing upward as the knight turned to me. Firebrand’s edge met the lower edge of his shield, passed up between his legs, and continued through the torso and armo
r, finally exiting out the top of his head.
Twin pieces of scorched and smoking meat clanged to either side as I walked through the gap. Firebrand made not one comment.
Killing Bronze wounded me, wounded me deeply, and it wasn’t something my regeneration could heal.
Wounded beasts are the most dangerous sort, and we are all beasts, deep down, every one of us. Wound us, and the beast rises, eyes like fire, cunning, ruthless, and savage.
Inside the enemy perimeter, I changed my outer garments, donning the armor and tabard of a dead mercenary. My cloak became a doublet, hiding under the outer garments of a soldier of light. A stolen cloak hung mostly over my left shoulder to help disguise the length and hilt of Firebrand. With my human disguise in place, I went up to the market square where most of the reserves camped. There I found it surrounded by a basic alarm spell. It was sensitive to powerful magic—enchanted items or spells—and to several other criteria. It was tailor-made to sound an alarm if I crossed it.
Instead, I broke it. It didn’t sound an alarm, but whoever laid down the line of power certainly knew it. I hurried, hopefully avoiding any magical observation as I entered the enemy camp. I killed several sentries on the way, merely to avoid a localized alarm and finger-pointing. Once I was among the tents, lean-tos, and makeshift shelters, I slowed to a walk while sweeping tendrils through everything, draining the lives of every living thing—the things I could feel without seeing, things in tents, under wagons, in shelters of a hundred sorts. Men, guard dogs, horses, rats, roaches, fleas—they all died around me, usually without even waking up.
Someone finally got around to sounding a general alarm. I expected less of a delay when I broke it. I knew I was ruining their automatic alarm, but someone wasn’t paying enough attention. As horns started to sound and torches to light, I grabbed the first man out of a tent as he was still rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“You! Come with me! Wake people up! Come on! Rouse ’em, soldier!”
He followed me out of reflex, I think. We stuck heads into tents and exhorted people to get their gear on and fall in. I lashed tents with invisible darkness after we passed by, sucking the life out of everything. Nobody gave us a second look as we hustled along, pausing at every tent to yell into it.
Finally, someone else came along to rouse out soldiers—someone whose job it actually was—and found them lying down, apparently asleep. Empty husks cannot be roused; there’s no one in there to rouse. The hollow meat often doesn’t know enough to quit, which confuses people.
Eventually, this started a fresh alarm, this one about the presence of the monster. I joined in, calling for priests and wizards, demanding to know why they weren’t here. I grabbed another soldier as he went by.
“Why aren’t there priests and wizards down here?”
“I don’t know! They haven’t got here yet!”
“Well, where are they!?”
“Still in their rooms, I’d guess.”
I cursed and added, “Fine. We’ll go get them! Move!”
He moved, and I went with him.
The first place we went was an inn near the northeast gate. It obviously didn’t do a lot of business—most of the traffic went through the western gates—but it was still a large, many-roomed building. It housed a lot of religious types rather than wizards, but that suited me fine. The priests mostly finished waking up and dressing to face evil by the time we arrived. The first few started coming out as we approached, so I killed my guide with a bone-breaking punch to the back of the neck—I may not have a lot of bare-handed finesse, but I have tons of brute force. Even before he fell, I charged the priests in front of the door.
They weren’t expecting a direct, physical attack. They were warded against tendrils, certainly, but none of their powers could stop me from simply hacking them to bits. Oh, I could have broken their protective auras, but it would be slow, taking real time and effort for each one. Instead, I slammed into them and drove them back inside. After that, it was merely a matter of claws and flesh in tight, close quarters. A few lifted medallions and their amulets blazed with a white brilliance. It stung, even burned, but if you throw a dead man into a living one it tends to ruin his concentration.
Also, if you rip a man’s head off and hand it—still moving—to his companion, the look on both their faces is priceless. Mayhem like that did my black, evil little heart a world of good.
I went through the inn like a dark angel and a tide of blood followed after me. Nothing escaped; no one made it out. I killed every priest, every acolyte, every glowing-aura-wearing piece of meat in the place. I poured their lives, their blood, their deaths into the hole, the yawning chasm, the black, open gulf in my soul where Bronze used to live.
It still wasn’t enough.
People were starting to come in the front door—armed and armored, ready to fight. I climbed out an upper window, onto the roof, leaped across the road, crossed the other roof, and climbed down. Once I was an innocent bystander again, I circled around and continued my hunt.
That was a lot of priests, but no wizards. What sort of magic auras did we have around? Surely, they must have wizards, possibly even a magician or two. Where was the highest concentration of magical force in this area of town? The building where they probably held Tianna was right there, but I wasn’t ready to force the issue, yet. No, it would be better to mingle, flowing with the crowd, finding anyone wearing a spell or carrying magical items. Quietly kill the spell-wearer, disrupt the magical items, and draw attention to the fact it happened. Lure more people in, find another wizardly type, and repeat.
I’m not the most subtle vampire in history, but in the middle of a hornet’s nest of frightened soldiers, I can manage.
I don’t know if anyone ever caught on or if they just assumed “the monster” was roaming freely among them, seen only by the dead. I don’t much care, either. If they were going to paint a picture of a black-eyed monster with a mouthful of fangs and long black claws, it was their own fault if they didn’t look for a wiry fellow in their own colors.
When the moon was a hands-breadth above the western mountains, I switched tactics. The sun would rise—well, the gods would light the sun again—in an hour or two and I wanted the Church’s high command to have something else to deal with. I returned to the perimeter and the now-abandoned positions.
The few people who survived my walk along the perimeter either fell back to the buzzing hive of their main camp or were recalled. All I know for certain is they didn’t like sitting on a battlefront alone.
But the empty bodies were still there.
There’s a certain amount of energy loss when I eat something. I can’t devour a human’s vitality and give someone else the same amount. Whether it’s an inefficiency in vampire metabolism or the inevitable effects of digestion, I’m not certain. But I consumed more on that night than the lives of the men at the front line. I sucked out the vital force of a thousand more within their camp as I wandered through the night.
I’m a lousy necromancer, all things considered. If I have to, I can make a dead man get up and walk. On the other hand, quite a lot of these bodies weren’t dead. Technically. They were empty, completely lacking in any animating force, and were going to die.
I snaked tendrils into every beating heart, every breathing corpse. Vital energy flowed into them, pulsing down dark strands, filling the flesh with temporary life and purpose. Every breathing body rose to its feet and followed me as I walked through the fallen. A dozen here, five at the next, only two at the next, then another six… hundreds of walking dead, or not quite dead, followed after me, each towed along on a dark, leash-like tendril.
We walked among the empty, dying bodies and I gathered up those who hadn’t quite finished, pouring into them a dark and terrible strength. They would kill, striking with all the power of mortal flesh and bone, tearing themselves apart with the force of their blows, until their bodies could no longer hold the energies within. The dead rose and walked, and I led my
temporary army to recruit them all.
The defensive positions of the Karvalen forces merely watched, staying well back and staying still. I wonder what they were thinking.
Morning started to creep up on me, so I sent my undead horde—my zombie horde; I’m a vampire, so I’m allowed to raise legions of zombies, aren’t I? — toward the center of the Church-held territory. Laid into them was the instruction to kill, pure and simple. They would try, of course, and would probably kill or wound about half their own number before being hacked apart. At least the survivors would have the delightful memory of chopping up people who were once on their side.
It still wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. There was no such thing as enough. I couldn’t kill them in sufficient quantities to ever take away the pain. I couldn’t harm the Lord of Light sufficiently to heal me. All I could do was kill and terrify and punish those who followed him, at least until the sunrise.
It would have to do.
I returned to the mountain, called T’yl, gave him the expended wands, and shut myself away from everyone I didn’t want to kill.
Wednesday, June 15th
Mary came back today, delighted at the tailored adjustments to her jumpsuit and the fresh powerpack for her laser. She came into my quarters and bounced into the bathroom.
“I’m home!” she declared, and immediately lost her bubbly good cheer. She came over to me, ignoring the way the waterfall soaked her, and put her arms around me.
I sat under the falling water, crying.
I suppose I could call it weeping, or shedding tears, or mourning, but let’s be blunt. I was crying. Bronze was the most… she was… Bronze was part of me in a very literal way and they destroyed her. You can lose a hand, or a leg, or an eye and it might be something like this, but it wouldn’t be the same. I was hurt. I was diminished. Explaining it is impossible, but I tried, just as Mary tried to understand.
“If I hadn’t made a special road, just for her, they couldn’t have ambushed us right there…”
