The Vampire Flame (Vampire Sorceress Book 3)

by T. L. Cerepaka

  “What … what made you decide not to kill yourself?” I said.

  Lucius frowned. “About a year after I became a vampire, I met an older Dracul in Pennsylvania who was a Pure. He showed me that there was a way to live as a vampire without needing to shed human blood. He taught me how to retrain my taste buds to prefer animal blood over human blood. He was a good man … or as ‘good’ as a vampire can be, anyway.”

  “What happened to him?” I said. “Is he still alive?”

  Lucius shook his head. “No. He died ten years after I became a Pure. He was murdered by a vampire hunter in his sleep.”

  “Ouch.”

  Lucius shrugged. “As a vampire, my emotions are more dulled than a human’s, so I didn’t cry when I first heard the news. But yes, it was very sad, because he was one of the few vampires I had any respect for, and yet he died in such a pathetic manner. Justice in this world, it seems, is as rare as gold.”

  I understood. Justice did sometimes feel like an illusion, even though I was aware that God would judge everyone as they deserved eventually. “Is that why you’ve continued to live? To honor his memory?”

  “In a way, yes,” said Lucius, nodding. “I’ve done my best to live my life as a Pure, but it is hard because most vampires aren’t Pures and don’t see any benefit in living that lifestyle. I’ve helped a few other vampires to live the Pure lifestyle since then, but not too many, because most vampires don’t even want to hear about it.”

  “Kind of like evangelizing,” I said. “Some people want to hear the Gospel, but a lot of people don’t, even if they need it. Right?”

  “I’m not an expert on your religion, so I can’t say if that is an accurate comparison or not,” said Lucius. “But if your description is accurate, then yes, I’d say they’re similar. Being a Pure gave me a reason to live, a reason not to hate my very existence and end it to keep everyone else safe.”

  I nodded. “Christianity does the same for me. I mean, I’ve never been suicidal, but it’s always a source of comfort for me whenever I feel down or depressed.”

  Lucius looked at me. “Even if you aren’t sure if you still have your ‘salvation’ anymore?”

  I gulped. “Well, I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Lucius, looking away from me. “I’m not very interested in human religion. As a vampire, I can’t seek salvation, reincarnation, or anything else like that. My whole point in life is to just live and survive for as long as I can before some vampire hunter beheads me or one of my fellow vampires decides to off me for some petty reason. I’ve accepted it.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that. Dad had told me that vampires couldn’t be saved due to essentially being soulless beasts, but I wondered if he was wrong about that. Lucius seemed to have a soul and basic sense of morality, even if it wasn’t entirely what I agreed with. I wondered if maybe Lucius could be saved, and if he could be saved, then maybe my own salvation was much safer than I thought.

  So I said, “But you still didn’t answer my question. If you could reverse your transformation and become a normal human again, would you?”

  Once again, Lucius looked at me, this time with an expression that made me feel a bit dumb. “After hearing everything I said, what do you think?”

  I was about to answer, but we turned the corner just then and found ourselves face to face with a giant made of stone.

  The stone giant took up most of the hallway, its arms crossed in front of its chest, its head bowed on its massive chest. It looked kind of like a Roman soldier, except with clawed fingertips and a strange golden javelin stuck to its back rather than a sword and shield. The stone giant smelled of dust and mud, even though the hallway was completely dry and there was not a hint of water anywhere.

  I immediately drew Domination from its sheath. “I don’t know what this is, but I’m ready to fight it if we have to.”

  “I don’t think we will,” said Lucius.

  I looked at Lucius. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it’s clearly just a statue,” said Lucius, gesturing at the stone giant. “It can’t get up and attack us.”

  I looked at the stone giant again. Lucius, as usual, was right. The stone giant’s feet were built into a base on the floor, which meant that the statue couldn’t walk over to us even if it wanted to. Still, the sight of the statue made my spider senses tingle, and I wasn’t even a Spider-Man fan.

  “Then what is it doing in here?” I said, looking at Lucius. “Another one of the Mistress’ tricks? Or another one of the Maze’s traps?”

  “I have no idea,” said Lucius. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But whatever it is, I doubt it is safe.”

  I opened my mouth to point out that Lucius was just stating the obvious, but then I heard stone shifting against stone and looked at the statue again. It had raised its head to look directly at us with empty stone eyes. Although I still doubted that the statue could walk, I nonetheless held Domination before me defensively, though I wasn’t sure how good a sword would be against a creature made entirely of rock.

  “Intruders,” said the statue, its voice deep and booming. “A vampire and a half-vampire. I’ve been awaiting your arrival, though I didn’t expect you to get here so soon.”

  “You knew we were here?” I said. “How?”

  “The Maze knows,” said the statue simply. “As for my name, I have no name but the Questioning Rock.”

  Lucius’ eyes widened. “You’re the Questioning Rock? Interesting.”

  “You’ve heard of him before?” I said, looking at Lucius again.

  Lucius nodded. “Yes. Vampire lore states that there exists a rock which asks complicated riddles of anyone who tries to pass it. The Rock is said to exist in the Maze, but some legends claim that it exists deep within the most ancient human ruins well away from civilization. I always thought it was just a myth, because no one had ever seen it before, but I guess it’s real.”

  “I am quite real, Lucius Red,” said the Questioning Rock, “as you have now discovered.”

  “Do you actually ask riddles of people?” I said, looking at the Questioning Rock. “Or is that part of the legend wrong?”

  “Riddles, questions, inquiries, and more are all my domain,” said the Questioning Rock. “It is how I spend my time, thinking of riddles and questions to ask those who try to get past me.”

  “What if we just go around you?” I said. “Or through you?”

  The Questioning Rock’s expression did not change, but I sensed that it was very amused by my questions. “It would be interesting to see you break your sword on my rock hard hide.”

  “It wouldn’t be wise to fight him anyway,” Lucius said under his breath to me. “The legends state that anyone who tries to fight the Questioning Rock always dies a horrible death. Exactly how, I don’t know, but the legends are usually reliable, so I would say we should try to defeat him by answering whatever riddles or questions he may have for us.”

  I realized that Lucius was right. The Questioning Rock was too big and powerful for us to defeat in a fight. It didn’t look like much of a fight, in all honesty, but perhaps that golden javelin on its back was there for more than just show.

  Sheathing Domination, I said, “All right, Questioning Rock, do you work for the Mistress?”

  “I work for no one,” said the Questioning Rock. “I only serve the Flame, which is the source of all magical power in the world. Where it goes, I follow. I care not what others do.”

  “Then I take it that the Mistress has already been through here?” I said.

  “Indeed,” said the Questioning Rock. “An old woman did come this way not long ago and answered my questions to my satisfaction, so I let her through without further argument.”

  “But she’s a witch,” I said. “And she wants the Vampire Flame. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I allow anyone who can answer my riddles to pass me,” the Questioning Rock said. “Good or evil, right or wrong, moral or immor
al … none of that matters to me. I seek intellectual challengers who can not only answer my questions, but give me answers I don’t expect. Alas, very few people are capable of doing that.”

  “And what if we don’t answer your questions to your satisfaction?” I said. “What will you do then?”

  “Then you must turn around and leave,” said the Questioning Rock. “Leave the Maze forever and never return. The Flame has clearly not chosen you.”

  “What if we don’t go away?” I said. “What if we want to keep going forward anyway?”

  The Questioning Rock’s eyes narrowed. “Then we will have a … problem, to put it lightly.”

  I got what he was implying, especially when his eyes darted to the javelin on his back. Clearly, the Questioning Rock was ready to fight whoever tried to force their way past him, and I suspected that he had magic as well, because he was a talking stone statue. It would be weird if he didn’t have magical powers of some sort.

  “What will it be, then?” said the Questioning Rock. “Will you answer my questions? Or will you turn around and leave? The choice is yours.”

  I looked at Lucius. “What do you think? Should we answer his questions or—?”

  “We have no choice,” said Lucius. “Unless you want to bet on the Maze changing its layout to benefit us, although given how it has herded us around, I don’t think that is a wise thing to hope for.”

  I realized that Lucius was right, so I looked at the Questioning Rock and said, “All right. We’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got for us. Better hurry, because we don’t have all the time in the world to spend playing games with you.”

  “Wise choice,” said the Questioning Rock. “Get ready, then, for the questions. I shall ask three of them, and I expect you to answer at least one satisfactorily. Once I ask them, I will expect a satisfactory answer, and soon.”

  “Certainly,” said Lucius. “We’ll answer as quickly as we can.”

  The Questioning Rock nodded. “Very well. Here is the first question: What is the Vampire Flame?”

  I frowned. “Is that a trick question?”

  “Is that your answer?” asked the Questioning Rock.

  “No, no, no,” I said quickly, “I was just … never mind. The Vampire Flame is the source of both sorcerer and vampire magic.”

  It seemed like an easy question to me, one that even someone as uninformed about the magical world as me could answer correctly, but then the Questioning Rock shook its massive head and said, “Wrong.”

  All of a sudden, the floor gave out underneath me. I almost fell into what looked like a bottomless black pit before Lucius grabbed me and pulled me back from the edge, though my sunglass fell off my shirt and into the pit out of sight. I clung tightly to Lucius, staring into the deep pit that looked like the gaping maw of a monster, which quickly closed again.

  “What was that?” I said, looking at Lucius. “I got the answer right, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” said Lucius. He looked at the Questioning Rock. “Why did you say her answer was wrong?”

  The Questioning Rock apparently did not hear Lucius, because it said, “Question number two. What is a witch?”

  Once again, I frowned. “That’s even easier than your last question. They’re sorcerers corrupted by the Darkness.”

  “Wrong again,” said the Questioning Rock, almost before I finished speaking my sentence.

  This time, holes in the walls opened and several spears shot out of them at us. Lucius and I fell to the floor, narrowly avoiding the spears that flew over us. As the spears embedded themselves into the walls on either side, I looked at the Questioning Rock again and said, “Are you trying to kill us?”

  “I forgot to mention that every time you get a question wrong, one of my booby traps is set off,” said the Questioning Rock without even a hint of apology. “You have managed to avoid the pit and the arrows so far, but we’ll see if you can avoid the next one, because I doubt you will answer question number three.”

  I scowled. I was really starting to hate this guy. I had answered both of his questions correctly, but he still treated me like I’d gotten them wrong. I doubt he was the actual Questioning Rock of legend at all. Most likely, he was just a servant of the Mistress, who was given the task of eliminating us so we wouldn’t be a threat to his Mistress’ plans. That was why he said each one of my answers was wrong and why he kept trying to kill us with these booby traps.

  “Question number three,” said the Questioning Rock. “What is a half-vampire?”

  “Okay, now you’re just messing with us,” I said, slowly rising to my feet beside Lucius. “But I’ll answer it anyway, because this is a question I definitely know the answer to. A half-vampire is—”

  Lucius’ hand suddenly clasped over my mouth, cutting off my words. I looked at Lucius, who was looking at the Questioning Rock rather than me.

  “Can we have a couple of minutes to talk?” said Lucius. “We need time to discuss the answer to this question and make sure we’re both on the same page.”

  The Questioning Rock bowed its head. “Very well. Because you answered the last two questions promptly, I am willing to give you time to think this one over. Not too much time, however, because I dislike waiting.”

  Lucius nodded and then turned around and gestured for me to come closer.

  Leaning toward Lucius, I said, in a low voice, “What was that for? I was going to answer the question.”

  “And get us both killed by whatever the Questioning Rock’s last booby trap is,” Lucius replied. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured out what’s going on here.”

  “You mean that the Questioning Rock is actually a servant of the Mistress trying to kill us?” I said.

  Lucius looked at me as if I had just said something incredibly stupid. “No, why would you think that? What is actually going on here is that we’ve misunderstood the Questioning Rock’s criteria for an answer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your answers so far have been correct and, more importantly, straight forward,” said Lucius. “There’s not much to discuss.”

  “But they’re true.”

  “Be that as it may, the Questioning Rock wants satisfactory answers, remember? He told us right to our face.”

  “You mean he doesn’t find my correct answers satisfactory?”

  “Apparently so.” Lucius glanced over his shoulder at the Questioning Rock. “Of course, I guess it is possible that he might actually work for the Mistress, but I consider that unlikely. It’s much more likely that we’ve simply misunderstood what he meant by wanting satisfactory answers to his questions.”

  I felt like such an idiot for not figuring that out on my own. When Lucius put it that way, everything made much more sense. I had given technically correct but emotionally unsatisfying answers to his questions. It surprised me that Lucius, a man, figured this out before me, a woman, but I guess that Lucius was just smart that way.

  “What should we do, then?” I said.

  “Give him satisfactory answers,” Lucius replied.

  “That’s not very helpful,” I said. “The question is, how do we give him satisfactory answers? What kind of answers would he even find satisfactory?”

  Lucius folded his arms across his chest. “That’s the trick, isn’t it? I don’t quite know the answer myself, because none of the legends I’ve heard about the Questioning Rock mention anything about it needing emotionally satisfying answers. This is quite the conundrum we’ve found ourselves in.”

  I thought hard about the question the Question Rock asked us. If we didn’t answer it in a satisfying way, then we would probably die, which meant that we had to figure out a truly satisfactory answer somehow. “He asked us what a half-vampire is, but I don’t—”

  “Time is ticking, travelers,” said the Questioning Rock, his voice booming in the hallway. “My patience is wearing thin. Give me a satisfactory answer to my question soon. I wish to hear it.”

  “Think ab
out what someone might consider a satisfactory answer to that question,” said Lucius. “What would be the most emotionally satisfying answer about what a half-vampire is that you can think of?”

  I bit my lower lip. I couldn’t think of an answer to that question, mostly because being a half-vampire was not very emotionally satisfying itself. Asking me to describe it in an emotionally satisfying way was like asking a depressed person to describe depression in an emotionally satisfying way. Yet if I didn’t come up with an answer, then the Questioning Rock would lose his patience and kill us both.

  Come on, Tara. Think. There had to be some way to describe being a half-vampire that would satisfy the Questioning Rock. Even if I didn’t like this life myself, that didn’t mean that the Questioning Rock felt the same way about it.

  “My patience is wearing ever thinner,” said the Questioning Rock. “The longer you dither, the more impatient I become.”

  “He really knows how to put on the pressure, doesn’t he?” I muttered under my breath to Lucius.

  Lucius just shrugged. “Which is exactly why we need an answer now.”

  I felt a little annoyed at Lucius for pressuring me, but I didn’t say that because I knew that he had a point. I thought as hard as I could for an answer, something that would satisfy the Questioning Rock, but my mind kept drawing a blank, so I prayed to God to give me an insight I could use to figure out how to answer the question.

  “Time is up,” said the Questioning Rock. “You clearly cannot answer the question, or any question for that matter. Therefore, you must die.”

  All of a sudden, I heard stone scraping against stone. At first, I thought it was the Questioning Rock moving toward us, but he stayed exactly where he was, looking at us with disapproving eyes.

  It was only when Lucius pointed up and said, “Tara, look!” that I found out where the sound was actually coming from:

  The ceiling was falling down toward us.