by Nick Stead
“Then you’ll be pleased to know I’ve just thought of a better use for you,” I growled. “You can come with me willingly, or I can drag you back down here with me. What’s it to be?”
“Aw see, I knew you’d warm to me eventually.”
Irritated, I made a move to grab him but even with my greater speed, he’d guessed what my response would be and just managed to dodge my clawed hand.
“Alright chummer, you win. Lead on.”
I could have gone for him again but as long as we were in the light, I didn’t think he could really go anywhere other than back towards the chamber where Selina and Amy were, and he had to know I’d be on him before he could get inside and seal himself in, if there was even a way to do that. It all depended whether it was another automatic door or one that had a mechanism we could control from our end, and even then David probably remained in ultimate control. Regardless, I would be able to run Gwyn down while he was in his human form so he didn’t have much choice in the matter. I felt I could trust him to follow me in the circumstances.
It might only have been because he didn’t have much option, but the Welsh undead did at least walk with me back to the two vampires. Zee didn’t say anything about the apparent change of plans, though he flashed me a quick grin of approval, possibly reaching the same conclusion I had about who made the better sacrifice. After all, we had no way of knowing how much more blood Lady Sarah needed and there was no guarantee we could keep her from draining her victim dry a second time.
Gwyn gave a mock shiver when he saw them. “Now that’s enough to give anyone nightmares.”
“Give me your arm,” I growled. “She needs blood.”
“Ah and it’s Gwyn on the menu. What makes you think my blood will work?” he asked, but complied with my command, holding out his arm.
“You’re human enough like this. If she can feed on my blood, I’m sure she can feed on yours.”
“And there I was thinking you were just an angry mutt. Well done, fluffy,” he said as I ran a claw across his wrist, blood welling up the instant I broke the skin just like in a mortal man. He knelt down beside the skeletal vampire without having to be asked and placed his wrist to her jaws. She’d been straining to reach the fresh blood as if she could sense it, despite still being without a nose to smell the fluid her body craved, her newly formed tongue stretching towards it like a snake dancing up towards its charmer. The moment the liquid touched her taste buds, her fangs plunged into Gwyn’s flesh in much the same way as a serpent would use its fangs to keep its prey from escaping while it squeezed the life out, and she set about draining this latest meal.
Wincing at the sensation of having his blood drawn out and the pain from her fangs in his flesh, Gwyn was otherwise uncharacteristically silent while the vampire fed. Zee continued to hold her down and keep some control over the situation, though she seemed to be fairly placid once the blood she needed began to enter her system. I was just relieved to see it seemed to be working.
Tissue which had already begun to creep along the bones with my blood resumed its growth, slimy red vines snaking along her skeleton as muscle began to reform at last. Her nasal bone seemed to extend as the cartilage regenerated and those gaping eye sockets refilled with the jelly-like substance of her eyeballs, seemingly unnaturally large until the muscle moulded itself around them and gave her the appearance less of a dead skull and more of a living face, albeit one still without skin.
Gwyn was becoming more like his namesake by the minute, his skin losing all colour as the vampire drained him of his blood. When he looked to be on the verge of passing out, Zee wrenched the partially healed vampire’s head from the Welsh man’s wrist, a large chunk of flesh ripping off between her fangs when she refused to let go. The healing seemed to stop again the moment the flow of blood into her body stopped and her unearthly scream resumed, though the organ it came from was less visible now. Those newly formed features were currently twisted into an expression of unmistakeable agony, her eyes windows to a world of suffering, dull blue and not focussed on anything in particular as if she was trapped in the pain of her bare flesh. Having experienced similar pain when a witch working with the Slayers had stripped my own body of its skin in the battle for my hometown, I could sympathise with her plight, and my anger reared up again.
“What did you do that for?” I snarled at Zee.
“Look at him,” Zee answered, gesturing at the Welsh undead. “She would have drained him dry, and I’m still not sure that would be enough to fully heal her. He might be a less valuable ally than Selina and her witchcraft, but he is still an ally.”
“Don’t worry about me or anything, I’ll just keep on bleeding out,” Gwyn interjected, collapsing to the floor where he fought to remain conscious. The open wound on his wrist continued to spew crimson, showing no signs of any supernatural healing.
I ignored him and addressed the vampire pirate again. “Well we can’t just leave Lady Sarah in that state and I’m not convinced he really is our ally. What else are we gonna do, go back to the original plan and risk using Selina’s blood as well?”
“You might find that a tad difficult,” Gwyn said weakly.
“What do you mean?” I growled.
“Let’s just say she’s in no shape to be a blood donor at present,” he answered.
“What did you do to her?” I roared, rage taking over.
“Not me. She’s busy trying to save your sister.”
Zee shot me a disciplinary look, clearly telling me to back off. “Gwyn, stay with us. Is there some way your body can heal itself?”
The Welsh undead’s eyelids were fluttering and he seemed to be losing awareness of his surroundings. Zee had to repeat the question twice more before Gwyn managed to answer him, though he was barely audible over Lady Sarah’s unrelenting cry of agony.
“Kill the lights,” he mumbled. “Let me return to darkness, then my body will reform good as new when I come back to the light.”
Zee didn’t seem to know whether Gwyn was fully delirious and talking nonsense so I said “That spirit thing in the dark with Hannah – turns out that was Gwyn. The light seems to make him weak and stuck in human form.”
“So we need darkness or he’s going to bleed out, but we also need light to bring him back into for him to become human again?”
I shrugged. “I guess. But what’s to stop him fucking off and leaving us if we let him return to his spirit form? How do we know he’ll come back to the light and donate more blood to finish healing Lady Sarah?”
“It sounds like we don’t have much choice, if Selina is otherwise occupied as he said. I didn’t get as far as checking on her or your sister when I went on ahead so I can’t confirm if he’s telling the truth. And besides, if we only break a few lights to create a patch of darkness so there’s still light either end of the passage way, where’s he going to go? He wouldn’t get far before one of us recaptured him.”
“I suppose,” I growled, though I didn’t bother to hide my reluctance to grant Gwyn the freedom darkness offered him even if it was in as controlled a way as possible, or my distrust.
“As you said, Nick, we can’t leave Lady Sarah in this state. It’s worth a try and if he somehow does find a way to escape and deserts us then we’re no worse off than we are right now.”
“I still think we should just let her finish draining him,” I argued, but I stalked over to the nearest light, intending to smash it.
“No, not that one,” Zee said. “If we need the lights to keep him human, we need them to be around Lady Sarah or we’ll have to move her to a new patch of light and then we risk losing control of her again. I can’t even begin to guess what state her mind is in right now.”
He had a point, so I grabbed the Welsh undead who had slipped into unconsciousness while we’d been debating what to do, and made my way further along the passage. As before, the lights were dim enough that I only needed to smash one on the wall either side of us to send the shadows rushing in. Th
e outline of the skinny Welsh man melted away seemingly into nothingness as darkness washed over him, but the weak lights further along didn’t stretch far enough for me to get a glimpse of what he became in his spirit form, even with my superior night vision. I just had the sense of something moving in the shadows once again – a patch of blackness more complete than the surrounding darkness he moved in – but whether it was still humanoid or resembled something else, I couldn’t tell.
“Much better,” Gwyn chuckled, sounding almost drunk on the rush of power he must have no doubt felt after being so weakened by blood loss.
“You can enjoy it later,” I growled. “We still have to heal Lady Sarah.”
When no response was forthcoming, I began to fear our ‘ally’ was going to let us down. I’d still not been able to fathom any reason as to why he’d let me fall into the room of spikes without giving me any warning when he surely must have known the trapdoor was there, or how it was that he knew so much about the dungeon in the first place. And worst of all, I was powerless to do anything while he remained in his spirit form. I couldn’t drag him back into the light and towards the stricken vampire so badly in need of more of his blood, nor could I create more light to force him back into human form. I didn’t have a modern day torch or the means to make fire, leaving him free to revel in his patch of darkness for as long as he wanted. I cursed myself for going along with his wishes, thinking we should have just let Lady Sarah drain him as I’d wanted. It might not have been enough to completely heal her, but it would have been better than nothing and maybe I could have spared the rest her body needed to fully recover.
“You need to work on your trust issues, Nick,” came a voice from behind me, making me jump.
I turned to find Gwyn on the very edge of the pool of light in which Lady Sarah still lay screaming, Zee still holding her down. He was naked and human once more, his body apparently completely healthy and his wrist showing no signs of the cut I’d opened up with my claw, or the bite mark from the medieval vampire’s fangs. There wasn’t even any dried blood to evidence there had ever been a wound, as there would have been on my own body after healing.
“Well don’t just stand there gawping you dork, pass me my clothes and let’s get this over with.”
I did as he said, too surprised to find he was still helping us to think of anything to say. My feelings obviously weren’t lost on him though.
“You really need to work on your trust issues, bro.”
I growled but didn’t deign to answer, my anger still bubbling away at the centre of my being.
Leaving the Welsh man to dress, I stalked back over to the vampires. Lady Sarah’s eyes didn’t even focus on the potential fresh meal she should have recognised me as, and I saw nothing of the being I’d kept on trying to get to know in those blue orbs. Then a terrible thought took shape in my head.
“Wait, weren’t her eyes brown before?” I asked Zee. “How do we know this is even her we’re healing? How do we know we’ve freed her of the necromancer’s control? How do we know if we really have saved her, or if she’s already gone and all we’re doing is strengthening a new vessel for the necromancer’s will?”
“We can’t know for sure if she’s still under the necromancer’s power or not. It could be the necromancy causing the change of eye colour, or it could be something else. I’m sorry I don’t have any definitive answers – even in all my centuries on this earth and all the things I’ve experienced as a vampire and witnessed in others, this is as new to me as it is to you.”
“Great. So we just continue to feed her and hope for the best?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
“No,” I growled, and turned back to Gwyn. He’d just finished dressing and made his way back over to us, grinning as if we were on some kind of lad’s night out.
“Looks like I’m back on the menu. Shall we?” he said, offering me his arm.
I slit his wrist a second time and he lowered it back to Lady Sarah’s mouth. She was slower to react than she had been before, even though her body must have been craving more of the blood it needed to restore itself to its former glory. I took that as a bad sign and tried to think how we would deal with her if she truly was still under the necromancer’s control. I could think of no other way besides the power of the hunger to break the dark magic’s hold over her, and even though that had worked with Zee, it clearly hadn’t had the same effect on Lady Sarah, or she’d have regained her own free will already. Unless Selina could do something with her witchcraft, that left us with killing the necromancer which seemed the only way to be completely one hundred percent sure in my eyes. Killing him (or her) had to break the spell Lady Sarah was under, just as I’d been told it would with zombies. Unfortunately, we had to reach said necromancer first and there remained the problem of what to do with Lady Sarah in the meantime. If she was being compelled to attack, she wasn’t likely to sit idly by once we’d healed her while we fought our way through the rest of the dungeon and hunted down her new master. No, she’d keep on attacking until we were forced to kill her, just as Zee had been compelled to do until I’d broken the control our enemies had over him. Maybe we could find a way to lock her in one of the chambers but with David in ultimate control over the entire place, we couldn’t really rely on a chamber to hold her – with the flip of a switch, he could no doubt set her loose to wreak more havoc whenever he felt like it. So what to do?
While I struggled to come up with a plan, Gwyn kept his wrist to the vampire’s mouth until finally she latched on as she had before, and her vampiric healing resumed. More muscle flowed across the slab of raw meat that was currently her body until she began to regain the shape of her human form. Her chest swelled beneath her dress until it was most definitely feminine once again, her torso no longer appearing sunken but healthy and shapely underneath her clothes. On her limbs, subcutaneous fat appeared over the red like a growth of sickly coloured mould, pale skin rolling across moments later until finally her unnatural beauty was restored, the horror of the holy water nothing but a nightmare chased away by the divine dream of unholy perfection.
The medieval vampire tore herself away from Gwyn’s wrist as her vampiric healing completed, her blue eyes no longer dull and unfocussed but transformed into shards of ice, piercing cold fixing on Zee with an intensity that I imagined rivalled my own flames of amber rage. But where my bestial fury came from the warmth at the centre of life, hers was the iciness of death. I’d thought before that the flames of my anger could leap across to the vampire and ignite her own blazing inferno but if that had been true before, now it seemed she had passed further into the cold of the grave, all warmth of the life she had once known left behind. As undead we existed somewhere between life and death, but where I would always lurk just on the edge of life, almost a part of it but not quite, she had crossed further into the void and now stalked on the very edge of death. She had died once to become a vampire but I wondered if we had just witnessed a second death and rebirth of sorts, after the holy water had almost put an end to her unnatural existence, almost making a true corpse of her for ever more. Almost, but not quite. And against all the odds, here she was not restored to her former glory but somehow greater and more terrible than she had been, melted down and forged into something stronger. At least, that’s what I liked to think had happened.
“You will release me,” she commanded, her voice inhuman and full of that power from beyond the grave.
Zee seemed unsure of the situation and I couldn’t blame him. The fact she’d pulled herself away from Gwyn rather than having to be forced away before she drained him dry again was surely a good sign that she had regained some control, but how could we be sure? What if it was merely the necromancer toying with us?
It seemed to me the only way we could test whether she was really herself was to question her about things the Slayers surely couldn’t know, but it occurred to me that if Lady Sarah was still in there but still under the necromancer’s control, her pu
ppeteer probably had the power to compel her to answer for him. But if the vampire we’d known was really gone and it was her master speaking through this new vessel he’d acquired then he shouldn’t have the same knowledge Lady Sarah would have, so it could at least confirm the worst for us.
I was about to voice those thoughts to Zee when Lady Sarah thundered again “You will release me!”
She didn’t wait to give him a choice in the matter that second time, throwing him off and rising to her newly formed feet. Zee recovered much quicker than a mortal and lunged at her in an attempt to pin her back down, but in a movement too quick for me to follow she batted him away, sending him crashing back to the ground. She turned those two shards of ice on me and it seemed my fears were confirmed. Just like when Zee had been forced to fight me, it looked like Lady Sarah was now being compelled to focus solely on me. Whatever power was currently running through her, it eclipsed even Zee’s vampiric strength, so what chance did I have? And Gwyn would be no help – I was vaguely aware that he’d already retreated to the patch of darkness that offered him a safe haven from the weakness of his human flesh which the light trapped him in. If he ran back into the fight he’d be useless in his human form and unless I could manage to break all the lights and free him to come over in his spirit form then there was nothing he could do. I didn’t even entertain the thought of tricking Lady Sarah to step within reach of the darkness: she was simply too fast for me to lead anywhere near and too smart to make the same mistake a human adversary might have been manipulated into.
Knowing I was truly at not just the vampire’s mercy but also that of her slavers, I readied myself to die. At least I had tried to save her and I hoped that would be enough to ensure Selina did everything she could to save my sister. But then the vampire surprised me by turning her icy glare on the nearest camera and baring her fangs in a hiss with such cold fury that I half expected the camera to actually freeze.
Out of the corner of my eye I was aware of Zee back on his feet and approaching warily. The medieval vampire seemed to have forgotten about both of us in the force of such hatred coursing through her though, and Zee must have been emboldened by that because he tried addressing her. I kept my focus on her in case she snapped again but I instinctively cocked an ear to listen to the other vampire.