by HDA Roberts
The first Elder arrived a little over an hour later, in a small convoy of three black SUVs, all nondescript, but far from anonymous. By then, I was waiting within the Shadow Realm, drifting between the walls of the house, listening out for any snippets of information that might come in handy. There had been nothing so far, just some local gossip about the Navarrenx mayor, who'd apparently been caught in flagrante with his assistant (again). Of course, this being France, that had improved his standing with the community, rather than harmed it...
When the cars arrived, I opened a small Gate near the ceiling of the entrance hall and watched as three Vampires, including Elder Thévenet, came into the house, leaving three human drivers with their cars; so far, so good.
I went back to my waiting.
Gaume, Jêgou and Marais arrived over the next ninety minutes, with the same basic convoy as Thévenet. None of them brought any humans into the building with them, either (which was rather helpful of them...). Once I was sure that they were inside, I popped out of the Shadow Realm high above the house and began my preparatory work. It wasn't complicated, but it was time consuming, and I only just finished casting the Spell frameworks as Bellegarde arrived.
Her convoy was larger, four cars, enough that the parking area was starting to get a little full. She strutted towards the front doors with half a dozen Vampires and one human trailing behind her. That last was a complication, but one that I was ready for, thankfully.
She was different to the others, and this wasn’t just because she was a different sub-species. All Vampires had a certain grace to them, Elders especially. They moved with the elegance of a dancer, or a gymnast. Bellegarde, however, moved more like Cassandra, like a warrior, but even more; like a killer. She wore the dark, elegant suit that seemed to be the uniform of the Aurelia Elders, but I felt that she would be far more comfortable in a suit of armour, with a broadsword in her hand and a good horse between her legs.
Objectively, she was beautiful; stunning, in fact. Her figure was perfect, sexy and yet strong, her face was a gentle oval, her black hair pulled back to show off her long neck and fine features. She was art given form... until you saw her eyes. They were a shark's eyes, merciless and terrible, without compassion or tenderness.
She would do very nicely...
The doors opened for her and she marched in with her entourage. I slipped back into the Shadow Realm and moved into the chateau's Shade so that I could have a little listen before my festivities began.
Bellegarde quickly barged her way into the main reception room, where the other Elders were already deep in conversation. Her hangers-on stayed in the atrium.
"Well, you’re all here, so what the hell is all this about? What do you four know that he doesn't want you to?" Bellegarde said impatiently, in a rather lovely French accent, actually. I would have been quite content to listen to that throaty voice of hers for hours... well, if she wasn't trying to kill me. That took away a certain amount of the allure.
But not all of it, unfortunately. There really was something wrong with me...
At the time, I wasn’t sure why they were speaking English, not that I was complaining. I only had a basic understanding of French, and a complicated conversation would likely have left me confused, at best. I would later discover that English was their 'diplomatic' language, one that all the Aurelia higher-ups shared.
Because most of their membership was either Spanish or French, they couldn't use either of those as their official language without offending one of the two groups, so a third language had been chosen. Because, when they were doing the choosing, Britain had the largest empire in the world, it was felt that English would be a good investment.
"Ah, Marie, so good of you to join us," Thévenet said, ignoring her outburst as he stood up. In spite of his warm(-ish) welcome, he didn't look particularly happy to see her.
I saw all this through another tiny Gate I'd opened directly above them, just large enough for me to peek through, hopefully not big enough for them to notice.
"Cut the nonsense, Jean. Just speak!"
"That's the thing, none of us know!" Thévenet replied, dropping far too heavily into a 17th century sofa that hadn't hurt anyone, and didn't deserve that sort of treatment... but then I remembered that I was about to do a lot worse, and let it go.
"We've been wracking our brains for the last hour or more, trying to figure out what the enemy thinks we have on him, and we're coming up blank! His counter-intelligence operation is so good that we've only been able to get the barest snippets of information on him. We don't know the extent of his powers, the location of the bulk of his assets, we don't know about his friends outside of the ones that live with him, and even that was hard to come by. We know practically nothing about him, certainly nothing that would cause him to attack the four of us at once, or to consider us a threat."
Bellegarde snarled and paced the room, her hands behind her back as she marched up and down, like a tiger testing the limits of its cage.
Then she stopped, her eyes narrowing.
"When we arranged this meeting, it was on the back of information from our sources. What, precisely, did those sources tell you?" Bellegarde asked.
"My man in the French Conclave told me that Graves was planning to attack us," Thévenet began, and then he repeated, almost word for word, what I'd said at that lunch. It was impressively accurate.
"Same here," Jêgou said, her face creased into a frown, "but I received slightly different information from my sources. If we assume that his meeting with the French was day ‘one’, then my informants told me that the attack would take place in eight days, and another said ten. Yours said a week, Jean?"
Thévenet nodded.
I had thought to give out actual dates, rather than a countdown, but Tethys figured that this way would add to the confusion and throw them off a little more. That seemed to have been a good call.
"So it was for me," Marais reported, "nine and eleven days, though."
Damn. That was just about everyone I’d leaked the information to. The European Conclaves leaked like bloody sieves! I wasn’t going to be able to trust any of them with what came next!
"And you, Gaume?" Bellegarde asked.
"Same story, seven days until the attack, and then another reported twelve."
And that was the last one. Rats.
"That's just strange. My source actually asked the enemy about this in person, and he told him that the attack wasn't to be for thirteen days," Bellegarde said.
I froze.
That last one was... disturbing.
I shook it off, this wasn't the time. I was in the middle of my gambit. If nothing else, I was coming out of this with far better intelligence than I went in with (even if it was mostly bad news).
Bellegarde finally stopped pacing. Her eyes went wide and then she started cursing; loudly.
"What?" Thévenet asked, shouting to be heard over the invective.
"We've been played!" she snarled. "He gave contradictory information to people he suspected we had on the take! He gave each of them different dates to see which numbers would get back to us; it's an old trick they used during the last world war to hunt German spies in England. Bastard!"
"But wait... if that's what he was up to, then doesn't that mean..."
"Yes," Bellegarde hissed. "It likely means that he's here."
Well, I think you'll agree that this was as good a cue as I was going to get.
I extended my Will outside of the Shadow Realm through my Gate and triggered my Spell.
The electricity went out and the Elders were plunged into darkness for a moment before the night was lit up by the sudden appearance of a Fortress Shield’s dome.
A standard Fortress Shield was an immensely complicated defensive construct, designed to hold up under immense pressure and damage. If you built them correctly, they could even be resistant to Spelleaters. That version created a one-way barrier, allowing other Spells and physical objects to leave, but not
enter, even the Magician who'd cast it (unless you could enter the Shadow Realm, in which case you were laughing).
Mine was different. It was designed to keep things in and out. I'd thought to just make it one-way and keep all the Elders pinned inside, but then it occurred to me than an immortal monster would almost certainly be quite willing to order some of their human minions into the barrier's limits to keep me from doing what I was about to do.
The Elders rushed to the windows. Bellegarde was still swearing like a sailor and I was having trouble containing my mirth. The darker parts of me loved what I was doing to them, loved the fear and the panic, loved that I was repaying them for what they’d tried to do to me and mine.
I would treasure the moment when they realised they'd been trapped by an Archon for a very long time. The almost synchronised wail that came from all but Bellegarde was just delightful.
"What do we do?!" Thévenet shrieked, on the edge of hysteria. "What do we do?!"
"Calm down! We can negotiate!" Jêgou said, trying to sound calm, and failing.
I let an ugly laugh resonate from the room's shadows.
"Maybe if you hadn't attempted to murder my entire immediate family right in front of me, then we might have had something to talk about. Tell me, would you be willing to talk to me if our positions were reversed?" I asked, keeping my voice even, calm and quiet.
"You're bluffing!" Bellegarde snapped. "The entire Supernatural world would turn against you if you killed us."
"Maybe, maybe not. Shall we find out?"
Chapter 22
Alright, just to clarify, killing someone, even someone as inherently vile and evil as Vallan, hadn't made murder any easier for me. If anything, it had made it harder. So, no, I wasn't going to kill them.
That didn't mean I couldn't scare the immortal crap out of them, though, at least a bit.
It was actually a little hard not to break into a maniacal laugh. It was just so much fun to be on the other side of the evil plan for a change. One really could see the appeal of the dark side; there were certainly benefits in terrorising the enemy, in rendering their hopes and works down to nothing but ash and a memory...
Damn but that slippery slope creeps up on you quickly, doesn’t it?
In that moment, though, I couldn’t bring myself to care. These people had been given several chances to stand down, to end this peacefully. I’d even have been willing to pay reparations (within reason). They’d chosen to take this further, to come after me and mine, to attempt to murder my family, to kidnap my friend.
What was about to happen wouldn’t go all the way towards balancing that scale, but it would be a start.
However, before I could begin the festivities, I needed to get the token human out of the way; he wouldn’t survive what I had in mind.
That, at least was quite simple. All I had to do was knock him out with a Coma Hex, catch him with a Shadow, drag him into the Shadow Realm with me and then drop him (face-up) in what turned out to be a puddle. It took maybe ten seconds and none of the Vampires even noticed, as they were too busy losing their minds in the face of an Archon’s fury.
Well, most of them were. Bellegarde, after her initial bout of swearing, had calmed down and now looked bored. She’d had as much of a shock as anyone when I sprung my trap, but now she was leaning back in one of the armchairs like she didn’t have a care in the world.
That was vaguely annoying. I wondered if this was how my enemies felt when I didn’t cower in terror according to the script.
"Are you still there, Shadow?" she said, sounding uninterested.
"Of course."
“Then are you quite done with the theatrics? Just get to your point; I know you’re not going to kill us.”
“You’re so sure?”
“You’re not the type, exception aside.”
"Nice of you to say. But as you well know, there are things far worse than death that one bored Immortal can inflict on another."
She snorted.
"So what are you planning?" she asked, as if unconcerned.
"For you? Absolutely nothing. You may want to close your eyes, though, infinite darkness can be bad for the psyche."
"What?”
My tiny observational Gate opened up, and a mass of black tendrils shot out to envelope her. She managed a single shriek of shock and outrage before I dragged her into the Shadow Realm. I could have knocked her out first, but Vampire Elders' mental defences were impressive, and I couldn't be bothered getting into a Telepathic fight with her just to spare a monster a little bit of existential horror.
I dropped her on the grass next to her flunky. She managed to stagger to all fours before vomiting up a stomach-full of blood.
"By the Dark Gods, what in the Hells was that place?!" she gasped, flinching away from the Gate.
"My home," I said, coming out after her, a set of surreptitious shields in place.
“Now, watch," I said, letting my eyes, black with my Power, meet hers before my Shadows drew me up into the air and towards my Trap, “And remember.”
The shield was fifty metres in diameter, not the largest I'd conjured by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't need to be big, just sturdy.
As I've said, my Trap Shield prevented physical objects getting in or out. It also prevented any Magic getting out, just in case the Elders had brought a tame Magician. However, I hadn’t blocked Magic from getting in.
As Bellegarde watched, I opened three broad Portals next to the chateau’s walls, and an absolute torrent of water came rushing in.
Because I didn’t want to ruin the local water table with salt, I’d taken the trouble to add a Portal anchor point near Lake Baikal in Southern Russia, the largest body of fresh water in the world. Not only did it have volume to spare, but it was more than deep enough for the pressure to make a terrific mess.
The stonework held up pretty well, I have to admit. Even the fixtures lasted longer than I’d thought they would. Except for the front door, that was right in front of one of my Portals and was shattered into tiny fragments within seconds.
The Elders never took a direct hit from the streams, but then, that wasn’t the point. I didn’t want them hurt, I wanted them scared. There was nowhere to run to, nothing they could do to stop me. They had to watch as the water level rose, first relatively slowly, but then quicker and quicker, covering the first floor, then the second, then the roof and then beyond.
The increasing volume acted to protect the building’s structure a little, but everything within it was completely ruined. The earth was churned up by the colossal pressure of the water, creating a swirling, chaotic mass of brown soup, with the occasional chunk of turf, piece of furniture or flailing Vampire spinning by my line of sight.
Eventually, the pressure began to equalise with the lake, and the water flow began to ease. I might have worried about the Vampires escaping through my Portals, but I’d made them one-way for precisely that reason. As the water ran out of places to go, I opened a tiny Portal at the top of the dome to let the trapped air out. When the gust of air was replaced by a spout of water, I finally banished all my Portals, leaving a glimmering trap completely full of brown, watery sludge.
I took a moment to admire my handiwork, and then I settled in for a bit of a wait.
The maelstrom started to calm quite quickly, and the Vampires eventually swam to the edges of the barrier, where they began to look for weaknesses. Some even pounded ineffectually on my barrier. They looked ridiculous, but were otherwise quite unconcerned. They even seemed to be holding up quite well against the intense pressure without much trouble. One or two of the younger Vampires weren’t looking too good, trailing blood from various orifices, but they seemed more or less alive.
Bellegarde laughed, drawing my attention back to her. "Is that the best you have? Making my fellow Elders a little wet?"
Oh, I’d been hoping for her to say something along those lines...
I smiled, and something in my expression must h
ave scared her enough that she stopped grinning took a big step away from me.
I sprung the second part of my trap.
My Fortress Shield flared brighter, and drew every scrap of thermal energy within its perimeter into its matrix, making it far stronger, extending its life considerably... and freezing all the water within its boundary completely solid.
The water and the Vampires.
Well, I couldn’t freeze the Vampires solid, their biochemistry prevented the formation of ice crystals in their cells and fluids, but the extreme cold did put them into a kind of extreme hibernation. Even a Vampire’s enhanced physiology couldn’t function without some heat to keep their proteins working. Without that thermal energy, every bodily function was effectively suspended.
Everything, right down to their brain chemistry, slowed to less than a crawl.
But they didn’t stop. They didn’t die.
This meant that I had four Elders whose minds were just vital enough to manipulate, but too lethargic to stop it from happening.
Perfect, in other words, for a Telepath with malicious intent.
I floated over to the closest Elder, Thévenet, and slipped a probe into his mind. His mindscape was sluggish, placid and weak, but there was more than enough function to work with. With only a little effort, thanks to my enemy’s state, I placed the most powerful and complex Coma Hex I'd ever created into his mind. And then I went on to do the same to each of the trapped Elders.
A Coma Hex worked by locking the mind into an inactive state, far deeper than a simple Sleeping Spell, even to the extent of putting all but the necessary body functions on something like a standby-mode. Because I was dealing with Vampires, and didn't have to worry about things like breathing, I could plant my Hexes even deeper and make them even more involved; even harder to remove.
They were, quite possibly, the most complex and subtle Spells I’d ever cast. Without my telling her exactly how, I doubted even Kron could have unravelled them without injuring the subjects horribly. Even so, I added a few nasty traps to each Elder's mind (though never in the same place twice) just in case someone thought to try and get around my Spellwork.