The Dead of Sanguine Night

by Travis Simmons

  She wasn’t as focused on her appearance as most girls. Instead, she noticed these things in passing. There was no point in worrying about things you couldn’t change, especially things that didn’t matter as much as what her family faced on a nightly basis.

  “What do you think he will find?” Lincoln, her older brother, asked from the head of the table.

  “Oh, who knows,” Nancy said, tossing a scrap of roast to their brindle Akita, Mitzy. The dog lunged into the air, the beef bouncing off her nose to land on the counter beside Nancy. She sat down, lifted one paw and wined until Nancy brushed the wedge of roast off the counter and into Mitzy’s waiting mouth. “All of those deaths in City Center are likely the cause for such a rushed meeting.”

  “Yea,” Lincoln said. He was taller, where Margaret was shorter. His dark brown hair never looked combed, no matter how much time he put into styling it. His eyes were hazel with a kind of piercing quality that belied the humor of his nature. His mouth, while looking small, was one of his biggest features both literally and figuratively.

  “What do you think could be causing it?” Nancy asked.

  Lincoln looked to Margaret, the family specialist when it came to monsters and those demons that lurked in the night.

  “I would say ghouls,” Margaret said. “The way the people are consumed; I don’t know many other things that lurk in the night and devour their pray the way ghouls do. The reports always make mention that it looks like the bodies have been eaten by a human. Unless we have a gang of cannibals that only strike at night…”

  “And if we have cannibals,” Nancy said, “we will likely have wendigoes to deal with in the future.”

  They didn’t have to debate long. The door thudded shut and moments after Mitzy started barking Samuel’s presence filled the kitchen doorway. The dog stood at his side, sniffing his legs as if wondering what great adventure he’d just returned from.

  Samuel was taller than Lincoln, broad in the shoulders, narrow at the waist. Samuel had peppered black hair and deep brown eyes. His face always seemed to carry the same amount of scruff from day to day.

  “A necromancer,” he said.

  “A necromancer?” Lincoln asked, scooting out of his father’s chair and into his own diagonal from Margaret.

  “That’s what’s been causing the deaths,” Samuel answered.

  Excitement swirled in Margaret’s gut. This was something new. A new beast she would get to study. A new monster in the night that she might even get to slay.

  “What do we know of necromancers?” Samuel asked Margaret. He sat down in his chair at the head of the table and Nancy brought plates of roast sandwiches and fruit from the kitchen that she sat before each of them.

  Margaret took a huge bite of one of her two sandwiches before answering. “I don’t know much, just their death mancy allows them to raise the dead and control undead. If they can do more than that…”

  “All right,” Samuel said, dividing his orange. “You’re going to need to research this. We don’t want to go in surprised.”

  “But all of the attacks have happened in the City Center,” Lincoln said. “That’s not our territory.” Margaret saw her hopes dashed. In her excitement, she’d forgotten that the attacks weren’t happening in their district.

  “The attacks are happening around Boulva Street, and the council has determined that’s our territory tonight,” Samuel said. “We are joining the other clan families in City Center to put a stop to the necromancer.”

  Lincoln beamed with excitement before tucking into his apple.

  “And the council of clans has given me these,” Samuel said, fishing around in his pocket. He pulled out three nubs of what looked like foam, and laid them on the table. “They’re called broadcasters. These three are linked together, allowing us to talk to one another over great distances.”

  Margaret plucked one off the table and examined it.

  “I was told you squish it in your fingers and push it into your ear. It will expand to fit comfortably and then it should work,” Samuel said. He didn’t sound completely convinced.

  “You didn’t listen, did you?” Nancy scolded him, her hands folded on the table before her.

  Samuel grinned. “It was a long meeting,” he said. “I may have drifted a few times.”

  Nancy rolled her eyes.

  Samuel sighed deeply, examining the wedges of orange on his plate.

  Great, here comes the bad news, Margaret thought, her interest no longer on the broadcaster she was squeezing between her fingers.

  “Maggie, you’re going to be the bait,” Samuel said.

  “What? No!” Nancy said, pushing to her feet. Every inch of her small frame seemed to quiver with anger. “Not my daughter,” she said. Her face turned nearly as red as her strawberry hair. If eyes could cut like knives, hers would have sliced Samuel to the bone.

  “I don’t like it either, but all of the victims have been women, and goat fits the bill,” Samuel said. “She knows the most about monsters and she’s skilled with a blade. None of the other hunter families have girls as likely to survive.”

  Nancy took several deep breaths that seemed to vibrate through her stout body before sitting down. There was silence as she plucked a broadcaster off the table and studied it in the sunlight slanting through the window.

  “You need to have one made for me,” Nancy said resolutely. “This is like nothing you’ve ever done before, and if you’re taking my daughter out as bait, I need to hear what’s happening.”

  “Do you think that’s wise mom? What if the ghouls eat her?” Lincoln asked. “You will hear her screams all the way from City Center.”

  “Stop it, you ass!” Nancy swatted at Lincoln, but it was no use, he was too far away for her to actually hit him.

  “It’s more likely Goat will eat them,” Samuel laughed.

  “I hate you all!” Nancy said, throwing a roll at Samuel. It bounced off his forehead and skittered across the floor. Mitzy grabbed it up and jogged to the entrance with it where she devoured her feast.

  The council library was a ten-minute wagon ride from the Vantasyl home in Gate District to West Shore. She checked her bags for the millionth time to make sure she had everything she needed: her monster journal, her ink, her quill pen, and her drying sand.

  The wagon deposited her on Claymore Lane as she’d asked. The council library was housed in a rickety store called Annabeth’s Pottery. While it was a fully functional store, it also served as a front for the huge, hidden mystical library in the back.

  The woman behind the counter wasn’t called Annabeth, but that’s how all the hunters who came here for the library referred to her to keep appearances. She worked for Mongrief, the leader of the clan council. Margaret had referred to her so long by her fake name that she couldn’t remember her real name, or if she’d ever been told what it was.

  Margaret nodded to Annabeth, who was helping a customer. The short, chubby woman nodded back, her wide smile scrunching up her rouged cheeks. Her dark hair was pinned behind her head today.

  Margaret wound her way through rows of terracotta to a graying wooden door in the back of the shop. For a moment, digging through the bag slung over her chest, Margaret worried that she’d forgotten the key. When she found it, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  The door opened onto a sprawling room with shelves upon shelves of books. The wooden floor gleamed bright from the sun shining through the circle of stained glass in the ceiling.

  “Hi Adelaide,” Margaret greeted the council librarian behind the L-shaped counter to the right of the door.

  Adelaide was a handsome woman of average height with wild blond hair that she normally kept pinned up behind her head. While she made every attempt to appear feminine, wearing dresses of the latest fashion with not enough fabric on the top and way too much fabric at the ass, she was solid and always gave the appearance of being more a tomboy than a lady.

  “Margaret,” Adelaide said, a smile ghosting across her fac
e. “I figured you’d be here soon. Mongrief told me time is of the essence, so I made it my duty to pull all the books we have on necromancers and necromancy.” She slid a small pile of books toward Margaret.

  “Thank the Goddess,” Margaret said. “This saves loads of time.” She gathered the books in her arms and carried them to a nearby table.

  “I also marked the pages I thought you’d find the most useful,” Adelaide said, bringing Margaret a cup of coffee. “I know you don’t have a lot of time, so it was the least I could do.”

  “You’re an angel,” Margaret said, trying to show Adelaide how thankful she was for what the librarian had done for her.

  Adelaide swatted her compliment away, as if she could batter it to the side before it reached her. She smiled again. “You’re too kind. Now, I will leave you to study.”

  “Thank you so much,” Margaret said to her retreating back. She sorted her supplies and arranged them around herself, flipping to a new page in the journal and titling it Necromancers.

  She sat the small earbud broadcaster to the side, not wanting to slip it in her ear yet. It had taken hours for them to get the broadcasters to link up, and as of yet, Lincoln hadn’t figured out how to turn them back off. If she put it in now, there would likely be endless chatter in her ear to distract her.

  For hours, it seemed, she searched through the books and made notes. Necromancers were skilled death mancers who could do more than just raise and control the dead as Margaret first thought. They also had a host of other powers. While they only ever had one extra power, two at the most, a lot of necromancers didn’t have any extra powers. However, if they had another kind of mancy to offset the ghoulish power to master death, it was a powerful dark mancy like illusions, mind control, weaving perverse dreams in a victim’s mind, or even taking control of the dream to plague their victim. Most necromancers had an affinity for serpents, often being able to commune with them or even control them to some extent. Almost all necromancers could spread disease and illness with their mancy.

  The most interesting thing Margaret found was the ability to master death completely so it would never touch a necromancer. By doing a very dark ritual—which the book wouldn’t detail—they were able to tear their soul from their own bodies and store it in another vessel. In order to kill a necromancer that had transferred its soul, one had to destroy both the body and the receptacle.

  When her hand was cramping and Margaret decided she’d exhausted all of her research, she squeezed the earbud and slipped it into her ear.

  Immediately she could hear her mother and father talking as well as Lincoln talking to his friend Ryan. Ryan was great with different kinds of mancy, and often Lincoln consulted his friend when making some new kind of contraption that could augment or even capture mancy to use at a different time. Now Lincoln visited Ryan to see if his friend could replicate the design of the broadcaster.

  “I have something,” Margaret said.

  “What is it?” Samuel asked. It was strange to hear her father so close at hand, though he was miles away. On their earbud Lincoln and Ryan chattered away about the broadcaster and how Lincoln could replicate the actual device, but Ryan would have to work a bit of mancy into the device to get it to link with theirs’ and to work properly.

  “Lincoln!” Samuel yelled.

  Margaret winced as her father’s voice rattled around in her head, causing her vision to swim. Adelaide furrowed her brow in concern, but Margaret shook her head to let the librarian know there wasn’t any real issue.

  “Hey, here, sorry. What’s up?” Lincoln asked.

  “Goat has something,” Samuel said.

  “Why does he call her Goat?” Ryan asked.

  “Because she eats everything that’s put in front of her,” Lincoln said.

  “Goats don’t actually eat everything,” Ryan said.

  “We know,” Samuel barked. “Now, thank you for helping with the other device, but please shut up now.”

  “Oh, right, sorry sir. Please go on,” Ryan said.

  “Now that we have Ryan’s permission,” Samuel said, “Margaret, you may proceed.”

  She told them what she found. While she was talking, Adelaide came back to the table and sat across from her, nursing a steaming mug of tea.

  “So what do you think?” Margaret asked.

  Adelaide pointed a long finger at the words Mind Control.

  “Sounds like mind control to me,” Samuel said.

  “That’s what Adelaide thinks too,” Margaret said.

  Margaret took the broadcaster out of her ear, wondering if Adelaide would be able to hear as well. The voices on the other ends were slightly quieter, but they could both hear what was being said well enough. Adelaide reached down and tapped the end of the broadcaster that faced out from the ear when it was implanted. The volume of the voices increased.

  “It makes the most sense,” Adelaide said. “The women were all found outside of their own homes and in abandoned buildings.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” Samuel agreed. “How are you both talking?”

  “Take the broadcaster out,” Adelaide said. “Tap a few times on the end that doesn’t go into your ear and it will increase the volume.”

  There was a bit of a ruffling, scratching noise on Samuel’s end, but it shortly stopped.

  “Hi Addie!” Nancy’s voice came from the broadcaster.

  “Hi Nance,” the librarian said with a smile. “Nice of you to join us.”

  “All right,” Samuel said. “So we agree this is mind control?”

  “Makes sense to me,” Lincoln said.

  “Why else would someone go out into the night if they weren’t made to?” Ryan added.

  “Thanks for that, Mister Obvious,” Samuel said. There was a thump from his end and Margaret recognized it as her mother cuffing Samuel on the shoulder.

  “Be nice to that boy,” she scolded.

  “Thank you Mrs. Vantasyl,” Ryan said.

  “Adelaide,” Samuel ignored the others. “Do you know of anything, besides mental training, that can overcome mind control?”

  “Hmm,” Adelaide said, tapping a slender finger to her lips. “Not off the top of my head. I assume if there was such an herb or tincture, it would be available on the market.”

  It wouldn’t be on any old market. Adelaide referred to the market hidden behind the Stumble Inn Tavern on East Shore. They often referred to the potion market as Stumble Inn, or just the market. The potions shop was set up behind the kitchen in the tavern and it was run by Waldorf Mink. He sold more than potions. In fact, it was where they got all kinds of herbs, poisons, salves and the like.

  “I agree.” Samuel sighed. “All right. We will have to be prepared for mind control, though besides our rudimentary training to ward off vampiric influence, I fear we are inadequately prepared.”

  “At least that will provide some protection,” Adelaide said. “The thing with mind control is realizing you’re being controlled. At that point it’s easier to shrug off. Your training may be enough.”

  “Maybe,” Samuel said, though it didn’t sound like he was convinced. “Will you be joining us tonight Addie?”

  “And miss out on all of this fun? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Adelaide said.

  “All right, Margaret, Lincoln, you two should get home so we can gear up,” Samuel said.

  “Be there soon,” Lincoln said, “we almost have mom’s broadcaster done.”

  Margaret had always wanted to hunt in the City Center. It was rare that she made it to the center of Danthea on most days, but there was an allure about the district by night that delighted every bit of hunter blood in her body. More beasts of the night were said to congregate in the City Center when the sun went down and the night ruled the city. For that reason alone, the City Center had almost as many clans patrolling its streets as all the other districts combined.

  If City Center was a shining beacon of evil for Margaret to hunt its streets, Boulva Street was j
ust the opposite. Rickety houses that slopped toward one another filled her vision. Behind broken fences, overgrown yards populated the streets. Walking was dangerous with the threat of tripping over trash that had been strewn across the road in a wind storm earlier that day. The debris sometimes masked the holes in the streets and deep rivets in the sidewalks.

  It must have taken mind control to send someone to this shit hole, Margaret thought.

  :Any sight of her, Goat?: Samuel buzzed in her ear through the broadcaster. She wasn’t precisely sure where all of the hunters were holed up, but she was assured they were close by. Definitely in range to swoop in and save her if she fell into more trouble than she could handle.

  “No,” Margaret told him.

  All was silent on the broadcaster. Though she could hear the occasional cough of sniffle in her ear, even the fidgeting of her brother, Lincoln, while he waited for some kind of action, they were all waiting for a sign from Margaret. A sign that the necromancer was upon her and she was headed back to an abandoned home to meet her end. The only constant noise she could hear was the muffled sounds of her mother chopping, stirring, and sizzling meat, readying dinner for their return.

  “Are you lost?” Margaret heard a musical voice behind her.

  :That’s the necromancer,: Lincoln broadcasted.

  :Everyone, let’s go, stay in the shadows around Boulva Street so we can see where she’s taking her,: Samuel ordered.

  Margaret tried for her best lost, scared woman look. It was difficult for her, but when she turned toward the slight, blond woman, she hoped she mastered the façade.

  “Yes,” Margaret said, proud of the slight quiver in her voice.

  The necromancer wasn’t what she would have expected. The woman was small with wavy blond hair, ghostly blue eyes, and full red lips. She was rather lovely and put-together for one who dealt with the dead.