Hunger Pangs

by Joy Demorra

  “He needs to know,” Nathan insisted.

  “Know what?” Vlad asked as he observed the interplay between them. “And what do you mean the Ironwoods are sick? Sick how?”

  Lady Ursula laughed, an almost strained sound which wasn’t humorous at all. “Sorry about this.” She turned back to Vlad with a smile that was sweeter than syrup. “Won’t be a moment.” She pulled Nathan down to whisper loudly in his ear, “Have you lost your Gods' damned mind?”

  Shaking his head, Nathan gestured toward Vlad emphatically. “Look, if he’s going to help us, he needs to know what’s going on.”

  “And you trust him with this?” Lady Ursula demanded. “We talked about this. He’s an outsider. No offense.” She reached across the table and placed a consoling hand over his.

  Vlad shrugged. “None taken.”

  “I’d trust him with my life,” Nathan stated, as though Vlad weren’t sitting right there and able to hear him. “I already have.”

  “And what about your family? Do you trust him with their lives?”

  Nathan turned soulful blue eyes toward him, and Vlad felt something terrifying thud in his chest. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have been his heart. “Yes.”

  Lady Ursula stared at him, then turned hard narrowed eyes to Vlad. She peered at him for a moment, sighed, and her shoulders sagged. “All right, fine. I’m not an amateur botanist interested in dog roses.”

  “Really?” Vlad arched an eyebrow at her. “I never would have guessed.”

  She gave him an equally arch look in return but opted to ignore his sarcasm. “I don’t suppose you know what a Forest Sister is?”

  The title—he could hear the capital letters—was vaguely familiar. Trying to recall what he’d read about them however many centuries ago, Vlad frowned. “They were… priestesses, weren’t they? Sort of like witches, but not.”

  “Close,” Lady Ursula conceded. “We’re guardians. We tend the Ancestral Trees and keep them safe.”

  “A noble calling.” Vlad inclined his head. He wondered if this was the truth and his eyes sought Nathan’s for confirmation, but the werewolf’s expression was carefully neutral. No help there. “I wasn’t aware there were any Sisters left.”

  “You and me both,” the werewolf muttered. Apparently, some of this was news to him as well. That was probably why he looked so unhappy. Nathan hated having the rug pulled out from under him. He liked facts and for things to make sense. He wasn’t even religious from what Vlad had gleaned. He certainly never talked about his experiences in a spiritual sense. They were just a part of him like having blue eyes sometimes and a tail at others.

  “There aren’t many of us left. I have spent most of my time in Obëria. I came to the Northlands seeking help.” Her words were guarded, careful. Still, Vlad could understand her suspicion considering the obviously underground nature of her sisterhood.

  “What sort of help? Wait.” Vlad blinked. “I thought you said the Ironwoods were sick?”

  “They are.” Lady Ursula sighed, pressing weary fingers to the crease of her brow. “All of the sacred forests are sick. Every last one of them.”

  Vlad leaned back in his chair. He glanced to Nathan, then back to the witch in front of him. “I think it might be best if you start from the beginning…”

  *

  Head in his hands, Vlad stared unseeing at the shiny flat surface of his desk. He looked up, regarding Nathan and Ursula, who appeared about as bleak as two people should when they’d just told someone the world as they knew it was in danger of ending. “So, what you’re saying is, we’re on the cusp of a supernatural disaster the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the fall of the Gods?”

  Ursula nodded, gnawing on her bottom lip. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Ye Gods,” Vlad breathed as he dragged his hands through his hair. “Ye Gods alive, undead, and those merely sleeping.”

  He’d always known the forests were important, sacred. But he’d assumed it was from a purely cultural and spiritual aspect. A remnant from a bygone age when folk tales, not science, ruled. Not something that could cause a mass extinction event if they fell.

  Vlad pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “And this… thing, whatever it is, you think it’s feeding on the magic in the trees?”

  Ursula nodded. “I’m certain of it.”

  “Then surely this is a job for witches,” Vlad countered. “I know they’re scarce these days, but I have a good network of occultists on Eyrie.”

  “We’ve tried magic,” Ursula told him hesitantly; her gaze drifted to Nathan, who shuddered visibly. “It’s… this thing, this horrible, hungry thing. Magic seems to feed it. Any magic. The harder we try to defeat it, the stronger it gets.” She lowered her gaze to the floor. “We don’t know what to do anymore.”

  And you think I will? Vlad wanted to ask. Hysteria rose in his chest and threatened to escape in an inappropriate laugh. Using every ounce of willpower he possessed, he managed to turn it into a cough. Setting his hands flat on his desk, he pushed his paperwork out of the way. Suddenly the civil unrest in Nevrond didn’t matter quite so much. After all, if what this little witchling said was true, there wouldn’t be any civilization—restful or otherwise—to return to.

  “Right.” He forced himself to take a deep breath and looked at her squarely. “What does it look like? Anything you can tell me might help.”

  “We can do better than that.” Nathan reached into the depths of his red coat and pulled out a sealed jar. Like a malevolent batch of sentient treacle, the contents bubbled and oozed at the bottom.

  Vlad clucked his tongue. “Aw, you brought me a present, and here I haven’t gotten anything for you. How dreadfully embarrassing.” He picked the jar up, holding the glass up to a shaft of sunlight piercing through the drapes. “These are yew needles,” he said after a moment. He fixed Ursula with an amused look. “Were you really going to try to pass this off as a sample from dog roses?”

  “I panicked.” Ursula shrugged defensively. “And Nathan said you had a soft spot for roses.”

  Vlad snorted, wondering what else Nathan had told her about him. He tilted the jar at an angle and watched as the black sludge climbed the sides of the glass. If he listened closely, he could almost hear it hissing.

  It looked like a type of fungus. Except Vlad had never seen a fungus move with such deliberate intent. Not even the slime molds he’d studied seventy—no, eighty—years ago moved like this. He let a spark of lightning flicker between his fingers, the energy dancing against the glass. With alarming alacrity, the spores moved toward it, bubbling with resolve. He could practically feel the sludge trying to break through the glass.

  He held it closer to his face. “Interesting. Your hypothesis about it thriving on magic seems to be correct. It wants the lightning in my veins.” He snorted derisively. “What little I have, at any rate.”

  “Please be careful,” Nathan said, sounding tense.

  Vlad looked up. The werewolf was unusually pale, his eyes pinched and his mouth twisted into an unhappy line. Was that concern he saw in Nathan’s eyes? Concern for him… or concern for what would happen if the spores got out? Vlad wasn’t sure.

  Vlad set the glass jar down and twisted in his chair until he could reach his winter coat hanging on the wall. Rummaging around the pockets, he pulled out his leather gloves and put them on. It didn’t dampen his natural energy field entirely, but it would act as a buffer of some sort. He picked up the glass again and gave it an experimental shake. “It certainly looks like fungus. Though the only one I can think of that seems remotely like this is Black Knot Disease. Are there fruit trees in the Ironwoods?”

  “Crabapples grow wild,” Nathan supplied, shrugging slightly. “And there’s an apple and cherry orchard across the fjord. But that’s the other side of the castle.”

  “And none of them are sick?”

  Nathan shrugged again. “They’re all fine, as far as I know.”

  “Hmm.” Vlad tapped
his chin thoughtfully. “Might be worth getting someone to check. Black Knot can take root for up to a year before it becomes visible. You could lose the entire orchard if you don’t treat it quickly.”

  “A year?” Ursula demanded, sounding breathless. “You mean it could have been there for a year, and no one would have known?”

  “At least a year,” Vlad confirmed. “Black Knot is patient. It wears the bark down, creating tiny wounds over time that let insects and other parasites in. It starts in the leaves. People are less likely to notice an infection there. They’ll attribute it to bad weather or the changing of the seasons. It’s not until the leaves fall off that you notice there’s black blisters spreading down the branches to the trunk, and by then you’ve lost the entire tree.”

  “The leaves on the Ancestral Trees don’t fall.” Nathan glanced furtively at Ursula. “Least ways, not naturally.”

  “It’s the perfect hiding spot,” Vlad conceded, getting up and making his way over to the fire. He crouched down and held the jar over the heat. The fungus, if that’s what it truly was, writhed to escape the warming glass. “Ideally, I’d need my lab for this. But from what you’re saying, my lady, we don’t have time for me to take this to Eyrie. I suppose we could always take it to the Royal College—”

  “No one else can know about this,” Ursula insisted. “If people knew the werefolk forests were sick…”

  “I understand.” And he did. As a fellow supernatural, Vlad knew all too well what she was afraid of. People were, for the most part, good at heart. But there was always a small and unfortunately productive contingency of the population that would use any excuse to be unmitigated arseholes. With the current social climate, if people knew the werefolk were vulnerable, there was no telling what might happen. People like Vlad’s father. The extent of the trust Nathan was placing in him struck home like a physical blow.

  He stood up, not wanting to shatter the glass over the flames. The specimen had certainly shown a level of sentience not normally found in most common garden parasites. It was intriguing, to say the least. Under different circumstances, Vlad might have enjoyed picking it apart.

  “I’m going to be honest,” he said, resuming his seat and setting the jar down on his desk. “I have no idea what this is. It looks like a mutation of Black Knot. But I can’t say for certain. But,” he hastened to add when he saw their expressions fall, “that doesn’t mean we can’t find out. I mentioned the College. We could try the library. If there’s a text anywhere in the world that’ll help us discover what this is, it’s there. Of course, I’m going to have to break into the forbidden section where they keep all the occult texts.” He allowed himself a toothy grin. “But it wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll head over there as soon as it’s dark. Do you both have lodgings for the evening? You’re welcome to use mine, if you’d like.”

  “Lodgings?” Ursula wrinkled her nose at him. “Who said anything about needing lodgings?”

  “Well, I, uh, assumed… That is to say, you’ve both traveled a long way, I thought you might like to rest.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Unless you want to try your luck sneaking in with me.”

  Ursula and Nathan exchanged a look.

  The werewolf shrugged. “Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “No, wait,” Vlad began, “I didn’t actually mean…”

  “Sounds like fun.” Ursula grinned, a wild, feral expression, and Vlad realized with no small amount of certainty that he was about to get banned from the Royal College of Science for life.

  Or at least someone’s life.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Dusk fell, but the city of Ingleton did not sleep. If Nevrond was the melting pot of the world, then Ingleton was its cocktail shaker: two parts people from every corner of the globe; one part booming industry; a dash of abject poverty and one of immense wealth, agitated and strained through the city walls, and garnished with a dusting of coal ash. And so it was that a vampire, a witch, and a werewolf managed to walk down the street together unnoticed.

  “It’s so busy,” Ursula commented. Sticking close to Nathan’s side, her golden eyes were wide as she looked around the hustle and bustle of the city at night. “Is it always like this?”

  “Most of the time,” Vlad said, wincing as the quartz crystal lamps that lined the streets flickered to life.

  He’d forgone his top hat, leaving it behind in their brief detour back to his rooms at the Royal Guard. He’d thought it best not to bring it along. With what he was planning to do, it was the completely wrong accessory, but with the light making his eyes hurt he wished he’d swapped it out with another chapeau.

  To distract himself from the pain, he asked Ursula, “Have you not been here before?”

  “Not in a long time,” she replied. “I don’t remember the buildings being so big.”

  “They’ve done a lot of work recently.” Nathan’s nose wrinkled in disdain as they passed a line of hastily-erected tenements with rickety stairs and leaning porches. “Whole place reeks of coal fire. I still remember when you could see the forests out past the city gates. Are we almost there yet?”

  “Nearly,” Vlad replied, nodding toward the college building looming in the distance. They’d have closed the doors to visitors by now, but Vlad knew his way around the place like the back of his hand. He’d been here when they’d laid the first brick. He’d even scratched his initials into one of them. Specifically the one second from the bottom just to the right of the cornerstone of the College of Medicine.

  “Do we have a plan for getting in?” Nathan asked. Vlad supposed the werewolf would want to pin down the specifics of their machinations. It was the tactician in him—that bright spark of razor-sharp intelligence he hid so well behind easy smiles and polite, Northern manners. He was probably already sizing the building up, searching for weak spots.

  “There’s a trade door over on the east side.” Vlad nodded toward the rightmost building with its gothic archways shrouded deep in shadow. “If you can get to it, I’ll be able to let you in.”

  “And where are you going?” Ursula asked, eyeing him curiously.

  “Up,” Vlad replied, grinning at the illuminated face of the clocktower.

  Nathan groaned and cast Vlad a worried glance. “Don’t fall.”

  “Oh pfft, please.” Vlad blew out an exasperated sigh, waving him off. “I never fall. You just get over to the east side without getting caught. Then the fun part begins.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Vlad ambled off. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he adopted the meandering gait of wayward students everywhere returning home from a night out on the town. The guard at the main gate didn’t even so much as look up as he passed.

  Eternal youth, Vlad conceded, came in handy sometimes.

  Once he was sure no one was around, Vlad gathered what little magic he had in him. Slowly, certainly slower than he liked, he flickered once, twice, before sliding into the nearest shadow.

  He waited, watching, to make sure no one noticed his little trick before jumping to a shadow on the side of the clocktower, then to one formed by a drainpipe.

  Zigzagging his way up, he jumped from shadow to shadow, hidden handhold to hidden handhold until he reached the top of the tower. There, he paused, listening. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The ancient mechanism drummed out the seconds with military precision. In fact, the Nevrond Navy used this very clocktower to set their chronometers.

  But that didn’t matter now. As soon as he was certain that whatever night watchmen were on duty hadn’t decided to patrol this part of the building right now, Vlad made a beeline for the little hidden door on the clock’s face.

  Used by cleaners and maintenance workers, the door was never locked. After all, who would be so audacious as to scale a ten story tower to access a library? The university’s lack of imagination and human-centric thinking was something Vlad had counted on over the years.

  A quick flick of the wrist and Vlad was inside.

&nb
sp; Slowly so as not to stir up any dust, he unlocked the door leading from the mechanical room into the rest of the tower and stepped through.

  Once in the hall, Vlad stepped into another nearby shadow zipping down the stairs in less time than it took for a human to draw a breath. Grinning to himself, Vlad brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his shoulder. So far, so good. Now where was he? He glanced around to get his bearings before he hurried off to sneak Nathan and Ursula in.

  Time to burgle a library and possibly, quite possibly, save the world.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  The seconds trickled by, and Nathan became acutely aware of his own heart in his chest. Crouched behind an empty coal cart, they were mostly hidden from view, but they’d be spotted instantly if anyone walked past. It was laughable, really. They weren’t in any real danger—not in a place like this. But old instincts died hard, and Nathan found himself tensing for a fight.

  Beside him, Ursula shivered.

  “Cold?” he murmured.

  Ursula nodded. It was barely cold enough to fog their breath in the air, but her teeth were chattering. “I dislike these modern cities. All metal and stone and no soul.” She flashed him a toothy smile in the darkness. “You’re not the only one who misses the trees.”

  Nathan opened his mouth to reply when the door across the way cracked open. There was nothing behind it but shadow, but Nathan recognized that particular form of darkness. He urged her forward. “Come on.”

  The pair moved together, darting across the empty expanse before slipping into the welcoming shadows on the other side. They’d made it; no one had seen.

  “You took your time,” Nathan said.

  Vlad made a soft clicking sound with his tongue. “Miss me?” he teased.

  Nathan’s heart thumped longingly in his chest. More than I thought I would.

  “Come on,” the vampire hissed. “It’s fairly quiet, but there’s bound to be someone patrolling the halls. The sooner we get into the library, the better.”