Caith spun around, pulling her against him, clamping one hand over her mouth.
Outside, Kyrian realized that he'd forgotten about something Opal had said and pulled open the door. "Opal told me the vampire had drained Cameo of all of her blood so that he could bring her sister back to life!"
Caith's eyes widened. "What?!"
"I forgot to tell you!"
"There are two vampires?!" Sage, now sounding as though she was losing her composure, called out.
"Maybe." He hastily shut the door.
Sage and Caith looked at each other and started to empty their backpacks on the floor.
"Where's that oil?"
"Matches ... I think I forgot matches!"
"Who are you?"
The two of them looked up at a lovely girl who was only about fourteen. She stood in the archway between the sitting room and the kitchen now. Her long, dark hair was loose and tangled, her posture seemed to be that of exhaustion. She was having a hard time looking at them.
Sage screamed.
Caith smashed the bottle of oil that he'd brought along and dropped a match.
Everything exploded in flame. Including his robes.
The girl shrieked.
Flame licked out under the door.
"Sage!" Kyrian threw open the door, and something burst out, knocking him to the ground.
The healers tumbled out, their clothes on fire.
The zombies had finally staggered over to the house, and Carrington sliced through the first one that had gotten too close to him.
Kyrian knocked Sage to the ground and patted out the fire and then put out Caith's robes.
"Fools."
Time seemed to stop. Haffef stood directly before them.
Carrington turned from his fight to stare, in horror, at the vampire before him. Never had he been near a creature so old. Haffef's body emitted a filthy, malicious aura that Carrington never imagined possible.
A zombie slammed Carrington in the head as he stared helplessly at the vampire, knocking him out.
Kyrian, apparently the only one who could still think straight, rushed to the door of the house. He couldn't let the vampire get back into his home.
Haffef covered his eyes with one hand. "She escaped. I don't need to get back in there, Kyrian."
Caith stood up, grasping a second bottle of oil in one hand, and flung it at Haffef. It smashed against the vampire's chest, coating him.
Haffef turned in Caith's direction, blinded by the lad's holy aura. "Take him!" He growled, and the field of zombies turned toward the healer.
"Kill them all!"
The ground quaked and came alive with zombies; hundreds of them pouring forth from shallow graves. They came tottering toward the three, who were backed up against the burning farmhouse as Haffef laughed.
Carrington awoke and threw himself, once more, toward the zombie horde, back into the fray, hacking the unclean bodies, cutting off limbs, silencing the droning voices of the lumbering undead.
The vampire glanced up at the sky. It was growing lighter. His laughter filled the air.
"You've accomplished nothing," he hissed, "and now you're all going to die."
"And you'll be the first!" Cameo was beside him. "Master." She struck him with her sword, but he knocked it from her hands as if it were a child's toy.
Haffef's zombies stopped moving. Every head turned to acknowledge her presence.
"You're still alive, hmm? So is your sister, and what a tale she has to tell. Nothing like the lies you told me," he hissed. "But no matter, you're going to die now. Along with your priests. Die, like the ugly, stupid girl you are. Like the dog no one ever wanted," he grinned wickedly. "Like Edel."
"Come to me!" she commanded, ignoring Haffef's petty insults.
The forest was alive with movement. An army of one hundred of Cameo's zombies lurched out onto the field.
Haffef punched her in the head, crushing her forehead and leaving an imprint of his fist with his superior strength. She tumbled backward, landing on her fallen sword.
Carrington raced up to the vampire, only to be flung into the air by one arm and deposited at the foot of the steps to the burning house.
Cameo was on her feet again; she took another swing at Haffef.
With a smirk on his face, he grabbed the hilt of the sword, holding her hand tightly and mocked, "Just like Edel." He tore her right arm from her body.
Her agonized cry filled the air. Blood sprayed from her artery, bathing Haffef and the ground around her.
Haffef’s deranged laughter nearly drowned out her cries.
"Protect me!" she commanded the undead, as Haffef lifted her once more.
A gory hand found one of his arms and latched onto it.
The vampire glanced down in annoyance. "What's this? What's going on?"
Another pair of discolored hands had a leg. The farmer undead, who had long been farming his land, had turned away from the priests and were now attacking him.
"Attack the healers!" he commanded, holding Cameo up with one hand and tearing the fingers from one of the undead who was clawing at his leg.
The zombies seemed oblivious to his demands. They ignored him.
"Get off of me! Attack the healers!"
"You made a big mistake when you created me," Cameo said darkly.
He turned with a serious look on his face that cued her to hasten her attack. "Rip Haffef apart! Tear him limb from limb!"
"Silence!" he growled, grasping her face.
"Die, you bastard!" she spat.
The zombies came toward him in droves, clawing at his hair, his limbs, and ripping his clothes.
Haffef pulled her headfirst under one arm; he held her head so tightly that she felt the bones in her face break and fought to pull her head from his strong grasp.
"Tear him apart!" she shrieked.
The zombies gripped the arm that he had around her head, and she felt his hold on her loosen for one moment, but with his ancient strength, he pulled his right hand free of the zombies and took hold of her jaw. With several vicious tugs, snapping and popping of bones and tearing of muscles, he tore her mouth open and ripped her jaw off her head completely.
Cameo emitted a wounded sound, unable to vocalize anything more than a moan. Blood washed down her body. Her lower jaw and tongue lay in the dirt. Cameo collapsed.
"Cameo!" Kyrian cried out.
Caith fought the urge to vomit.
Many undead hands grasped Haffef's throat, annoying Haffef as he batted them away, wrenching the arms from the bodies.
As he turned, though, a wave of undead had him, his arms and legs. A mob of hundreds of reanimated dead washed over him. Pinning him to the ground, tearing his head, his legs.
Haffef screamed.
The sound of his pain rejuvenated Cameo. Barely alive, she reached for the sword lying on the ground beside her.
The healers, pulling Carrington toward them, huddled together near the burning building, listening to the moans and mews of the undead before them and of the vampire's agonized cries.
Cameo hefted herself to her feet once more, looking much more the undead that she was. She was tottering, bleeding, without a voice now. With only one arm, she forced herself into the pile of growling undead, swinging wildly into the pile, knocking some of the zombies from Haffef, looking for any sign of him.
All at once, she saw his face. He was staring up at her from the dirt, his face covered in blood, contorted with pain.
She struck him in the face with her blade and caught him in the eye. It didn't cut through. So she struck at him again. Over and over, until she had lobbed off the head of the monster who had made her. The thing that had tormented her for over fifty years. The thing that had murdered Edel and threatened the lives of her friends.
The zombies were still tearing his body. She stumbled backward, dragging her sword behind her. There was a foot on one side of her, and a large piece of his scalp and hair blowing across the field.
She fell to her knees. Unable to support herself any longer, she dropped the weapon and crawled toward her arm, which is where she finally fell, face down on the ground.
As Cameo fell, the zombies all ceased to live. They all fell.
There was one tall heap of dead bodies on top of Haffef, and a ring of zombies all about him, unmoving. The suddenness of it was shocking. There was a complete silence.
The sun lit the sky, with its first golden rays, and Haffef's body burst into flame.
Kyrian ran through the field, littered with dead, to find Cameo's body.
"Don't heal her!"
"I can't heal her, Carrington!" the lad yelled through gritted teeth, as tears flooded his face. "That's not the way it works."
* * * * *
Opal leapt from his borrowed steed and scrambled down the steep hill that descended into the forest where Cameo and the clerics had confronted the zombies while he slept off the pain killer days ago.
He hacked away at the saplings in his way with his rapier.
In the distance, he could hear the high-pitched scream of a woman. He knew it was her. Opal raced down in the dark of the woods until he reached the bottom, falling against several saplings, and stared out onto the open field.
There she lay, covered in blood. There was a fire under a pile of zombies a few feet away from her, and Kyrian standing over her broken form.
He jumped up, about to run out to see her, but then he hesitated. The group of clerics was still there, and they had just left him locked in his room for hours. Clearly they weren't going to work with him.
One of her arms was lying on the ground two feet away from her body.
"Oh gods," he cursed himself for falling asleep.
He watched from the thicket as they talked among themselves over whether or not to heal her.
He bit his lip in frustrated horror as some of them hefted shovels and came together in a semi-circle around her pitiful corpse. He decided that if they attempted to molest her body further, he would attack; otherwise he'd wait in the forest and listen to see what their plans were.
* * * * *
The others had moved over to Cameo's battered form.
Caith turned away in disgust.
"Pull it together, Caith."
"She doesn't have half of her face."
"She came back, Kyrian," Sage said quietly. "She was loyal to you."
Kyrian wiped his face, unsure if he should really be crying for someone he knew was a killer ... a lich, probably a half-vampire. "Yeah, she did."
Carrington pushed a shovel into his hand. "Now we have to bury her."
"Bury?" Kyrian paled. "She's probably not dead."
The young warrior's voice was gentle. "She's been dead for years, Kyrian. It's time we laid her to rest. The priests want it."
"The priests?"
"Of course. The moment they found out that she was undead, and that you knew her."
"So you tricked me into asking her to help us so that we could kill her when she was done?"
"It's hard to kill someone who is dead."
"You know what I mean, Carrington. We used her to kill her master when we couldn't figure out how to do it."
"Well," he wiped the sweat from his brow, "she wanted to kill him."
Kyrian shook his head. "Those aren't pure motives. I'll help you with this, but this is the last thing I'll ever do for the priests."
Carrington just nodded and began to lift her lifeless body. The group of them picked up her various body parts and their shovels and carried her back into the forest and up the hill, onto Gallop Road.
"Where will you go after this, Kyrian?" Sage asked as they hauled her body to the nearest crossroad.
"Ponth."
"You sure you're not going to pursue the priesthood?" Caith asked.
"Positive. I just want to help people."
"You know how the priests feel about doing healings without their blessing," Carrington reminded him.
Kyrian ignored him. "What about you, Caith?"
"Going to become a priest. My parents would kill me if I didn't finish up. They've spent too much money on me now as it is. You know how parents are," he chuckled all the while carrying Cameo's arm. "I'll look you up sometime after I've become a full-fledged member of the clergy."
"All right."
"Going to tend to animals and farmers, Kyrian?" Sage fell back to talk to him.
"Going to be a farmer, I expect. Maybe a tenant farmer for someone else. I don't know much about it. All my childhood I worked in an iron-ore mine, but I'm not going back to Furnaceville to get that job back."
"But you're not really going to heal people then, right? You wouldn't go against the wishes of the formal clergy?"
Kyrian smiled at her thoughtfully, "Certainly not."
Chapter Thirteen
It was nightfall. Cameo's jaw and right arm had been buried in an unmarked grave, off the side of the road in a field between Ponth and Hangingford, but Black Opal knew where they had buried her parts. He knew because he had followed them, and then he broke into someone's barn and found a shovel and a lantern, and then he waited until nightfall and returned to dig up that arm and that decidedly filthy jaw.
Those he placed gently in a sack, which he carried over one shoulder, like the grave robber he'd become, and walked to Hangingford.
There, on Gallop Road, at the sign for Hangingford, was where Kyrian and his religious friends had laid Cameo to rest. There was an unmarked footpath nearby that ran east to west, two footpaths intersecting; it was technically a crossroad.
It was midnight or a little later. He set down his bag on the newly turned soil, and he glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching him. He removed his duster and his jacket and a lovely brocade vest, then set to work digging up Cameo's body. It didn't take very long, about forty minutes before he saw the spikes on the back of her glove glittering in the moonlight. Another hour or so more and he had managed to uncover her mutilated remains.
Opal took the lantern down into the hole with him and brushed the dirt from her body.
* * * * *
Kyrian drank down a cup of coffee and spooned himself a large portion of porridge. It was the first time in a long time that he felt at ease.
"Your friend left these behind," said Alerkat as he came out of the back room where Opal had been sleeping. "Looks like some writings and cosmetics." He handed the bag to Kyrian.
The young man opened up Opal's shoulder-pack and found the same things that he had given to Cameo when he met her in Shandow. Something he'd believed then to be a speech, but it was actually one of Bellamy's plays, and the wanted posters for Black Opal and Francois Mond. He smiled when he saw them, then repacked the bag.
"It's a play," he said, setting it down. "Unfortunately I can't read."
Alerkat looked at the lad thoughtfully. "You're planning on making your life here in Ponth?"
Kyrian nodded.
"Well, I think I can find the time to teach you."
He brightened. "You would?"
"Of course. You'll be helping out this community a lot if you're planning to do work as a healer—"
"Oh, you know ... I can't do that. The clergy would be against it."
"Yes, I know that is their official stance," the bald priest chuckled.
Someone knocked on the door, and Alerkat went to open it.
"Mr. Roberts, come right in. The young man is this way."
Kyrian stood up when he saw that it was the man with the horse that he'd healed.
"Mister ..." Mr. Roberts held out his hand to Kyrian.
"MacRoom, but call me Kyrian."
"Kyrian. The priest says you need work."
"Yes. I'm looking to—"
"Farm?" He grinned. "Right. Well, how does stable work sound to you? We could train you up, get you working with horses? I know we owe you more than that. Alerkat said you could stay here in the shrine with him."
Kyrian smiled thoughtfully. Out the
corner of his eye he saw Cyrus standing beside him.
"Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for."
* * * * *
Cameo opened her eyes. She was lying in a bed somewhere. The walls were rough hewn, just wooden planks without any paint or wallpaper. There was a large wardrobe and a dressing table with a mirror, a washbasin, and pitcher. And as she looked across to the end of the room, there was Black Opal lounging on a patterned settee, reading a book. His long legs stretched out over the arm of the sofa, and he was eating a small cake. He seemed very engrossed in whatever it was he was reading.
"Where am I?"
Opal was instantly at her side, beaming down at her. "In a tavern. Something out of the way. You're quite safe now."
"Safe?" There was a grittiness as her teeth rubbed together. "Do you have any—"
"Whiskey?" He pulled the cork off a bottle and helped her into a sitting position.
"Yes, thank you." She swallowed it down and then shivered. "Ugh, yuck ...."
Opal took the bottle as she shoved it back in his direction.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Days."
"Oh," she nodded, thinking about her situation. She was in bed somewhere, in a tavern with Opal. "I destroyed Haffef."
"Yes." He smiled as he sat down at the edge of her bed.
Then she touched her face. Something horrible had happened to her in that fight. He had torn her face in half.
"It's healed, rather nicely if you ask me."
Cameo ran her hand over her mouth; the skin had knitted back together. How many days had she been there? "Where is Kyrian?"
"Oh, him. I did hear him say that he was going back to Ponth, but I wouldn't go looking for him if I were you. He still believes you're where he left you, I'm afraid, buried at the crossroads. Where all undead belong."
"What?"
"Sorry, my dear. I'm afraid I was forced to remedy you from that situation. It was a little gloomy, but—"
"I was in a grave?" She ran her tongue over her teeth; now that explained the grittiness. Her mouth was still full of dirt.
"Yes," he answered softly. "I couldn't live without you as it turns out."
Cameo and the Vampire (Trilogy of Shadows Book 3) Page 18
