Vlad was in shock from the nightmare day he had endured. Everyone and everything seemed to want him dead. As the fog receded, Vlad lay utterly shattered beside the ruined abbey, panting loudly from his surreal ordeal. He was beyond exhaustion, and incapable of generating enough energy to even contemplate moving. Every part of him ached and throbbed. As the lids of his eyes closed, he saw vampires circling the abbey high above him in the sky. They could not land, but they would not take their eyes off him all night in case he made one slip. That was all they needed.
Let them watch.
His inner strength gave him new confidence. In combination with the life or death struggle he had survived, it made him feel more alive than he ever had in his short life to that point. It was an incredible feeling in his young mind and body. Vlad fell into an instantaneous sleep and dreamt of grateful salvation.
A wild howling noise brought Vlad Ingisbohr back from the land of sleep with a start. He opened his eyes, expecting to see vampires surrounding him, leering down at him with their fangs bared. Luckily, he saw none. He cautiously peered back down into the riverbed where the werewolves had been, but all he saw were footprints in the mud and torn shards from his tunic blowing away in the distance. The howling wind of a storm engulfed him. Trees were bending backwards in the gale, and it nearly blew him back down into the riverbed. He rolled back from the edge of the riverbed and got to his feet and ran. Even though it was daytime, it was incredibly dark. Vlad struggled around the wall of the ruined abbey and slumped down against it. It gave him a little protection from the biting storm, but not much. Vlad heard a mighty crack followed by an earth-shattering crash. Vlad peered around the corner into the blinding wind and saw that a huge oak tree had collapsed in the maelstrom nearby. He desperately needed cover from the teeth of the tempest that snapped at him from all angles. If the wind didn’t drop something heavy on him, its frigid blasts would freeze him to death.
Grabbing a fallen branch, Vlad managed to fish his ragged tunic out of the gully, and he wrapped it around his shivering frame for meagre warmth. The garment was damp, dirty and cold but better than nothing. He peeped over the wall again, squinting against the screaming wind in his eyes and the icy scratch of hail on his burning cheeks. Vlad looked past the fallen oak tree to plot his escape route, and that was when he saw it. It was an odd, flickering blue light in the trees. What was it? A ghost? Or was it the light from a cottage where he might sup the milk of human kindness and find food and shelter? He licked his lips at the thought of hot food and a dry, warm bed under a roof away from the elements. Vlad put his foot forward to move but hesitated as he reminded himself that others had disappeared forever following such mirages.
He suspected it could be the Will-O’-the-Wisp phenomenon. The children of Nocturne had it drummed into them from an early age not to follow false beacons or “Simpkin’s Fire” near swamps or marshland. They were warned that those lights lured desperate people to their deaths in quicksand. Sometimes they just got so lost and disoriented that they starved, gave up the will to live, or took their own lives. Vlad was wary of the danger, but urged himself to investigate the strange light against his better judgement. He would not last long where he was in the storm with another impending vampire assault coming after dark. With a big sigh, he left the sanctuary of the abbey and dashed into the woods.
He scaled the felled oak and covered the ground between the abbey and the forest with the speed of an arrow. Vlad soon found the wind was nearly knocking him over with its force. He moved from tree to tree, using their trunks as a windbreak against the tempest unleashed upon him. It eased his passage through the verdant undergrowth somewhat. Vlad checked and saw that the blue light was still there. It seemed as far away as before at the abbey, despite him moving towards it at a pace. It was a worrying sign. Vlad continued on, his eyes watching the blue light. He pleaded with himself for the light to get closer as he moved towards it. Vlad was expending a lot of energy. He already was weak from hunger, thirst, his injuries, the draining pursuit of the vampires and an uncomfortable night’s sleep on hard ground. If the blue light faded, his hopes of survival would fade with it, and he knew it. Vlad silently prayed to his father, his grandfathers, to God, and anyone who could hear his prayer. He was not ready to die; he had too much to live for.
“It’s not my time to go,” Vlad said. He repeated those words out loud as if they would stave off death like an incantation.
He came through a circle of oak trees and stopped with a look of astonishment on his face. There was the blue light he had seen from far away. Up close, the orb of blue/white light blinded him. It was a miniature, icy sun floating there in the forest. Vlad had never seen anything like it. He had heard of Gadzook Goblins hurling huge chunks of ice at their enemies, but they were far, far to the north where it was colder. Besides, Gadzooks never hurled anything as big, luminescent or splendid as the orb before him. Vlad marvelled at it, unaware that it was having the desired effect that it always had on prey. Vlad felt something land on top of him from the trees with incredible force and power. It flattened and winded him. He was dazed and felt a powerful, suckered hand flip him over to face his attacker.
“I am Yara-Ma!” his attacker screamed in Vlad’s face, its stinking breath detectable even in the howling gale.
Vlad was stunned and terrified. The Yara-Ma looked like one of the vampires, but was smaller and had crimson, scaly skin. It had the wildest yellow eyes Vlad ever had seen, and a fierce face that only intended harm to whatever had the misfortune to encounter it. Its arms were stretched out and there were holes in the palms of its hands that reminded Vlad of the Stigmata of Christ. However, the holes were far from holy, and they pulsated and quivered with a craving for blood. Even its feet were suckers for vorbing. It had Vlad pinned to the ground and was about to use all its suckers at once to extract a massive amount of Vlad’s blood. That was how it was able to vorb so fast, rendering its victims helpless or dead through shock and/or blood loss. Yara-Ma’s horrific face loomed closer to Vlad’s, with ravenous bloodlust etched across it.
Vlad was unable to move and had to think fast. “Our father, who art in Heaven…” Vlad said.
“Nooooo!” Yara-Ma roared, covering his ears with his hands.
Vlad summoned up a last reserve of strength and managed to knock Yara-Ma off him long enough to get up and start running. Yara-Ma unblocked his ears and looked around furiously for his victim.
“You will die slowly for that, human!” he screamed. “Come back to Yara-Ma!”
Luckily for Vlad, Yara-Mas were arboreal vampires who relied on surprise attacks to incapacitate their victims. Their shorter physique meant they were not creatures built for speed or land-based pursuits. Unlike Deadulus and his ilk, Yara-Mas did not have wings. They also were solitary hunters, which lessened their chances of vorbing considerably if their initial tricks did not work. Vlad was too fast, and the Yara-Ma did not want to stray far from the safety of his tree. There, he was vulnerable to being attacked and killed by one of the other horrors lurking in the forest. The vampire knew he had missed one of his rare chances to attack in daylight. The darkness of the storm combined with the shade of the tree made it virtually night under there, and Vlad had wandered by at an opportune moment. Vampires were nothing if not opportunists.
The Yara-Ma reluctantly retreated with a frustrated, hungry shriek and scrambled back up to hide in the tree. Vlad heard it and quickened his pace in the distance. In the blink of an eye, Vlad had disappeared from view. With a flick of his claw, the Yara-Ma reignited the blue orb again to entice his next unfortunate victim. It had been two days since it last had fed. If it imbibed no blood soon, it would be forced to leave the safety of its tree and find prey without the blue orb gimmick, and that made it anxious. Yara-Ma grumpily settled back down to sleep with one eye open, a fisherman in a sea of blood waiting for another bite on his line.
Chapter Seven
Vlad stopped running after what seemed an eternity. He leaned ag
ainst a tree to catch his breath, but a flashback of the Yara-Ma jolted him clear of it. Vlad made a silent vow to himself never to rest under or near a tree again. He was out of breath and shivered from the adrenalin pumping through his body. He was unable to stay still. Vlad knew he nearly had met his end out there alone at the hands of an awful creature like the Yara-Ma, and it made him sick. He was so tired, tired of the vampires, of running for his life, and of not being able to be with his loved ones. Most of all, Vlad was physically and mentally exhausted. He was young, but he felt old. That was life in Nocturne. Those who did not mature quickly did not survive. He knew he would find it hard to sleep. If he slept near a tree, the tree vampires would get him. If he slept in the open, Deadulus and his vampires would spot him from the air. Even if he did find a safe resting place, the vampires had the option of sending the werewolves to sniff him out.
The road to Mortis seemed twice as long right then. He realised they would hound him every step of the way, and that he would have little or no sleep. There was no safe port in the storm for him. There was only the tempest all around him thrashing him mercilessly. Vlad sighed, and felt as depressed as the encroaching weather. What madness had made him think his quest was possible? Anyone who ever had taken on the vampires had died the most appalling death imaginable, and he would be no different. He was suffering for that godforsaken village of Nocturne that was not worth saving.
That was his fatigue talking, Vlad told himself. Everything seemed worse when he was tired. It was hard to think straight. He mentally retracted that thought and made a conciliatory gesture for no one in particular to see. His mother and the good people of the village came to mind. They were worth saving. Even the bad people there deserved a life free from the curse of vampirism. He also reminded himself that he had held off the werewolves and that Yara-Ma. They had tried to destroy him, and he had stopped them. He could finish what he set out to do, and he would, no matter who or what attempted to stop him. It struck him how like his father he was. Adam Ingisbohr’s indestructible determination had spilled over from him to his son with the shedding of his blood on Vampire Mountain. That made Vlad so proud inside that his chest swelled. His father lived on in him, and so he had not died at the hands of the vampires. As long as there was breath in his body, the tantalising promise of avenging his father’s death and eradicating the evil that plagued his village was there. The vampires knew it, and were determined to end the Ingisbohr bloodline once and for all and protect their bloodline to ensure it thrived for eternity.
As he was alone, there was no one to keep watch over Vlad while he slept. Then he told himself that God did, and it gave him a moment’s solace. He knelt and prayed for protection and guidance. It was all he had left. He normally closed his eyes when he prayed, but he kept his eyes open for danger. Vlad knew it only took a split-second of carelessness, and his life would be over in that harsh environment. The only laws out there were the rules of the jungle: fight or die, kill or be killed.
Vlad had been so concerned with frantically escaping Yara-Ma that he had lost his way. He checked the constellations in the Heavens and saw that he had gone a considerable distance to the east. He had to be careful not to venture too far east. If he did, he would end up at the Windless Sea, which was a very strange place. Ships were routinely wrecked there in mysterious ways, and the spirits of the dead passengers and crew reputedly haunted the shoreline. The spirits confronted travellers on the road and begged for help or a bed for the night. Anyone who saw the ghosts aged rapidly; some went blind, and others descended into madness. Strange creatures inhabited the Windless Sea, and witches were drawn to the area on Sabbath nights when they consorted with all sorts of foul beasts.
Vlad had an experience with witches in his childhood, dead ones at least. He had sat in his father’s rickety old wagon as they passed through Wychbury where all the witches were tried, hanged, and buried. It was before burning was the accepted method of disposal for those condemned for witchcraft. Vlad was afraid to look into the moonlit cemetery as he passed by on the wagon with his father, but curiosity got the better of him. Through the mist, he saw row upon row of female arms sticking up out of the graves. By not burying the body fully, it was believed that the Devil could not take full possession of the person’s soul. The outstretched arms also served as a visual deterrent to others. They were meant to show the dead witches eternally grasping at Heaven to ask forgiveness from God for their heinous sins. The arms were in various states of decomposition, ranging from skeletal to pale, freshly buried ones that seemed to belong to a being that still lived. Vlad had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards.
Vlad put that thought from his mind and smiled as the good memories of his childhood came back to him. It was better than reminding himself of his lonely expulsion. Vlad was blessed with some good teachers in his childhood. His maternal grandfather, Creesus McStocker, had been a sailor, and he taught Vlad to navigate by the stars. It was one way that Vlad stayed on course for Mortis. Despite there being a dirt road to follow to Mortis, at night, in bad weather or when being hunted, it was easy to wander off track. The stars were always there. If Vlad lost his way, they told him the correct route. Vlad’s navigation skills were saving him precious time and giving him and the oblivious people of Nocturne a chance of a positive future. That urgency spurred him to continue.
Vlad’s paternal grandfather, Kurt Ingisbohr, had been a shepherd. Vlad spent most of his childhood summers with his grandfather and helped him tend to his flock of sheep. Kurt Ingisbohr taught his willing grandson how to live off the land and find food and water when it was scarce. Such a vital skill did not just apply to the care for animals. Famine and drought had blighted the land before, and certainly would return again. It was equally important to fend off starvation and thirst on the road to Mortis. A sharp mind and energetic body were important at the best of times, but with supernatural foes in pursuit, this was obligatory. The slightest morsel of food or drop of hydration could just give enough lucidity to outwit or strength to outrun his tormentors at life-and-death moments.
Vlad had an advantage over others who may have found themselves in his predicament. Both his grandfathers had taught Vlad to be aware of his environment at all times. Creesus taught him about weather patterns and to be aware of storms. Kurt taught him about the body language of his animals that denoted a predator was stalking the flock, and the hunting tactics various predators used and how to counteract them. Both men also taught Vlad about local folklore, superstition, and history. They imparted their wisdom, but also their pride in their occupations. They told Vlad to fight to preserve the things they passed down to him. Vlad never had any brothers, and his father and both grandfathers were dead. They were huge absences in Vlad’s life. He wished they were still around to give him counsel at that moment, when he needed guidance more than ever. Vlad told himself to be strong. He was the last Ingisbohr, the end of the bloodline. He would not disappoint his ancestors. He would attack the vampires with everything he had. If they destroyed him, it would not be easy for them, and people would remember the name of Vlad Ingisbohr. Of that, he was certain.
“Listen to me,” a voice said.
Vlad froze as he thought that Yara-Ma had caught up with him and that he was dead. When no attack came, Vlad looked behind him for the location of the voice.
“Not there, here!” the voice said from up ahead.
Vlad walked forward into the distance, but all he saw were trees.
That was when the voice shouted right in his ear. “YOU HAVE FOUND ME!” the voice screamed.
Vlad screamed, too, and jumped back. When he looked closer, Vlad could not believe his eyes. There was a disembodied mouth embedded in the bark of a tree. Vlad wiped his eyes and shook his head, thinking he was hallucinating or dreaming.
“I mean you no harm, whoever you are,” the lips said.
“Most unusual,” Vlad said, rubbing his cheek.
“Yes, most unusual that a mouth can talk as you do,” th
e lips sarcastically said.
“I have never seen a tree with a mouth before.”
“I am not the tree’s mouth, I just live here.”
“You have no eyes. How can you see? Never mind.”
“How did you know my name?”
“Your name is Never Mind?”
“Aye, NeverMind, I am. And you are…?”
“I am Vlad Ingisbohr of Nocturne…or I was.”
Vlad instinctively extended his arm to shake hands and then sheepishly retracted it when he remembered he was addressing a pair of lips.
“It seems you are as rooted to the spot as I am…or you were,”
NeverMind said.
“Yes, I was banished from my village,” Vlad said.
“There’s no pleasing some people,” NeverMind said.
“What do you know of vampires?” Vlad asked.
NeverMind smiled. “I must close my lips tight when those jagged, famished mouths sniff about me.”
“They are my sworn enemies,” Vlad said.
NeverMind’s lips formed an O shape. “Such certainty from one so young.”
“Are you a man or a woman?” Vlad asked.
“Neither…both,” NeverMind said. “I speak the truth no matter who nor what asks it.”
“Then answer me this: Am I on the correct route to Mortis, or have I lost my way?” Vlad asked.
“This is a question asked by many travellers before you,” NeverMind
said. ‘I always reply that this is the way to Mortis. They never return to scold me for my answer, so I assume the information is correct.”
“Perhaps you have directed them off a cliff or into a swamp, and that is why they do not return to scold you,” Vlad said.
“Perhaps,” NeverMind said, “but I am all mouth and no action and cannot be held responsible.”
“I’d like to punch you in the mouth,” Vlad said.
“You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last,” NeverMind replied.
The Vorbing Page 9
