The Blood Thief of Whitten Hall (A Magic & Machinery Novel Book 2)

by Jon Messenger

  Simon shifted his weight and slid his feet from the dais, resting them on the step. Despite his bone weariness, he forced himself onto his knees and finally to an unsteady standing position. He felt naked without a weapon with which to defend himself. His pistol was gone. The Inquisitor kit had been left with the rest of his packed belongings, he assumed in his room at the inn. Even the stone chamber in which they found themselves lacked the wooden beams and discarded axe handles of the coarse stone room beyond the doorway. He was unarmed, in the presence of a truly ancient evil.

  “If you think I’ll set you free, you’re sadly mistaken. I destroy magic within the kingdom, not release it upon its citizens.”

  The vampire reached toward Simon, but the chains on his wrists caught on the throne. The chains snapped taut, forcing his arms backward. The vampire looked at his prison and sighed disconcertingly.

  The vampire sat back on its stone throne, resting one arm comfortably on the chair’s armrest. Its hand settled perfectly into a well-worn groove in the stone, where it had been polished smooth from years of wear. Its other hand stroked its chin as it observed the wary Inquisitor.

  “You speak of destroying magic in all its forms, yet you travel in close confines with that which you purport to hate.”

  Simon narrowed his eyes as he took another cautious step down the stairs. “My companion is different from you. There’s goodness in her. She’s a victim of circumstance, not a monster borne of evil.”

  The vampire wheezed in a faint semblance of a laugh. “You know this of me? You know that I’m evil incarnate?”

  Simon shook his head. “I don’t need to know of you. I see your offspring and the evil they’ve committed. Tell me that you, yourself, haven’t partaken of the meals they’ve offered.”

  The vampire leaned forward slowly. “I have fed. To tell you otherwise would be to tell a lie neither of us would believe. Yet you know nothing of me. You know nothing of my time spent in this abysmal stone prison, its walls serving as a far better cage than any metal bars ever could. You know nothing of the torture I’ve endured, staring at the same walls, with the same burning torches, with my same writing carved into the walls from a time where my sanity had wandered far from my body.”

  Simon leaned against the nearest wall for support but glowered at the vampire. “I can’t give you what you want. There’s enough of a vampire problem in Whitten Hall without releasing yet another.”

  “I am nothing like them!” the vampire hissed. “Calling them vampires is blasphemy. They are insignificant specks, their life not even measured as a grain of sand in the great hourglass of existence. I was alive when your kingdom was but a conglomeration of tribes, slaughtering, raping, and pillaging one another for the glory and the pleasure. You were child playthings when I was already ancient!”

  His exuberance resulted in another coughing fit. As the vampire settled once more, it pushed loose strands of wispy, white hair from his face.

  “You say you’re not evil then?”

  The vampire glanced toward Simon, his skin stretched taut across his skull. “I could not deceive you and say that I have not committed evil deeds, but the deeds do not define the man.”

  “The deeds are the man, not the words,” Simon countered. He was engaging in dialogue with the vampire despite his predilection, knowing he had little else he could do until he was certain the path beyond the stone doors were clear of vampire vermin. “Convince me you’re not evil. Convince me that the patron of the night tribe against which I fight isn’t evil incarnate. Tell me your tale of how you came to be in this prison.”

  “Do you know of the Rift?” the vampire whispered, closing his eyes as though recalling fonder times long past. “Whitten spoke of it, a vestibule between our worlds.” He drew a deep breath from between his clenched teeth. “Long ago… long, long ago, yes, I was from the far side of the Rift.”

  “The Rift only came about a decade ago. How is it that you’ve been here so long?”

  The vampire opened his eyes slowly and fixed his scarlet pupils on the Inquisitor. “Many lifetimes ago in my world, the one of magic as you refer to it, I was a man of position and power. I had a small army at my command and vassals who bowed so low that they kissed the ground in my presence. I was a creature of the night, and their respect for me was only equaled by their fear.

  “For years, I satisfied my bloodlust by feeding on the flesh of our enemies. No one missed the highwaymen who vanished in the night. Invading armies were splintered as their scouts were found emaciated, drained of their blood. Because of my gift, our kingdom lived in peace.”

  Simon glanced around the room, longing for a weapon.

  “Do I bore you already with my tale?” the vampire asked.

  The Inquisitor looked back to the thin creature. “You’re hardly providing a convincing argument of why I shouldn’t kill you. It sounds like you were every bit the monster I believe you to be.”

  The vampire sighed heavily. “I was, to be sure. Please forgive me, but you must hear the horrid tale of my youth to fully appreciate why I deserve my freedom now.”

  Simon gestured for the vampire to continue, knowing he had little other choice at the moment.

  The vampire clenched its hands into fists. His fingers moved begrudgingly, having spent far too long grasping the arms of the throne. “The Barony was a utopia for those under my protection, but our enemies grew wary of our borders. Bandits refused to traverse our forests. Neighboring fiefdoms forewent invading our lands for easier conquest elsewhere. And I? I grew hungry.”

  Simon stepped cautiously forward until he was certain the strength had adequately returned to his legs. Intrigued, he sat on the bottommost step of the dais, knowingly out of reach of both the hands and feet of the bound monster.

  “You fed on your people.”

  “Not the healthy or strong; never those who contributed to the well-being of the lands,” the vampire said, as though his words justified his actions. “I fed on the ill and the elderly, on those disabled, those who were more a burden on their families than a boon. In the blindness of my youth, I thought they should be appreciative of the service I provided.”

  “They turned on you, didn’t they?” Simon asked matter-of-factly.

  The vampire’s gaze grew distant and unfocused as he recalled a time nearly forgotten. Eventually, he shook his head and returned his focus to Simon. “Forgive me. Without regular sustenance, my mind has a tendency to wander.”

  The vampire wheezed as he continued. “They came to my keep with torches and pitchforks. They stood at the far side of the portcullis and demanded my blood.”

  “Is that when you fled; how you found your way to our world?”

  The vampire paused and appeared perplexed. He furrowed his brow sadly. Were it not for the state of undeath in which it found itself, Simon was sure the vampire would have shed a morose tear. “Flee? No, my boy, I slaughtered them to a man. My anger fueled my bloodlust and I descended on them, even as my army marched through the gates. They were peasants and laborers, ill-equipped to face my wrath. Before I could recognize the error of my wrath, their blood flowed like rivers through the streets. I opened their arteries and filled my moat to capacity.”

  Simon swallowed slowly, aghast at the monster’s admonition. There was no glee upon the vampire’s face as he recalled the wholesale slaughter of his subjects, as though only remorse remained. The Inquisitor took a deep breath and focused on the vampire. Despite the Inquisitor’s outrage at the admitted atrocities, there was also a burgeoning sense of sympathy for the creature, as though his years trapped in this realm had served as a sort of penance. Simon yearned to hear the end of the story.

  “Then how is it you came to be in our lands?”

  The vampire lowered its hand back to the worn armrest and smiled at Simon. “You men of science never cease to amaze me. Your curiosity is stronger than your stomach. I speak of the genocide of my people and all you want is for me to finish my story. You’re all mi
nd and no heart; so very different from my own lands.”

  “Your story,” Simon insisted. “I must know how it ends.”

  “A vampire must eat,” the creature on the throne said. For a moment, Simon thought he was referring to feeding on him, until the vampire quickly continued. “I had sustained my life by feeding on the infirmed and the convalescing. Yet in my fit of rage, I had killed them all, not just the weakened but also every living man, woman, and child residing in my barony. Without them, I had no source of sustenance and I grew hungry once again.”

  The vampire reached up and rubbed his eyes. “I found food where I could, in the veins of the very soldiers who had helped me slaughter my servants. When they discovered my treachery, they, too, fled. I was finally truly alone, the lord of an empty, lifeless land. All had abandoned me, save for my closest vizier, a witch who had the ability to scry the worlds.

  “It was he who told me of your world. He had foreseen it, he told me. There was a bleed between our worlds, a small, unstable portal. It led here, to your world, though it was a time so long ago that you have barely recorded it in your books of history.”

  “It was a feeding ground for you,” Simon said as he spat on the ground in disgust.

  “Judge me as you like, but I saw in your world a feast of flesh the likes of which you could not imagine. I didn’t see the men and women of your land as anything more than food. In my land, there are others of my kind, but here, amongst your ancestors, I knew I would be a dark god.”

  “Then how is it you wound up a prisoner in a dark cavern?”

  The vampire glanced around the room, where his unkempt fingernails had carved into the limestone over the centuries of captivity. “The portal was unstable, flickering at its periphery even as we arrived. One moment, it showed the surface world, full of life. Yet when I stepped into the bleed, the portal shifted to here, depositing me in a natural cavern far beneath the earth. No entrance. No exit. No hope of escape. Only silence and with it, introspection and reflection.”

  Simon toyed absently with a discarded sliver of limestone. “Would you have me believe that you discovered the error of your ways during your time in captivity, that you became a changed man?”

  The vampire chuckled softly. “Young human, I don’t believe you understand how great a time passed while I was imprisoned, nor how strongly the silence of a stone cell weighs upon your mind. I don’t know how to convince you of the sincerity of my words, but hundreds of years alone made me realize the error of my more youthful indiscretions. I want my freedom, but not to return to the sins of my youth, but rather to atone for them.”

  Simon shook his head, still unsure of the creature’s sincerity. Luthor had once called Simon a bleeding heart for so willingly accepting people at their word, though in Luthor’s defense, he had been referring to a damsel in distress and not an ancient evil from beyond the Rift. There was a part of the Inquisitor that wanted to believe the vampire could change, but a much stronger part of him knew that few people, if ever, really changed their hearts.

  Changing the subject, Simon recalled the narrow exploratory tunnel carved off the main mine, which led toward the room in which they now found themselves. “The miners found you when they were searching for another vein of iron, didn’t they? They blasted directly into your chamber.”

  The vampire sighed, knowing his words were falling on deaf ears. “I could barely lift my head at their presence. They fetched the chancellor, who saw in me a potential for power and glory, the likes of which he could never attain as merely a servant of another king. He saw in me opportunity, and I saw in him my own evil mirrored in someone else’s eyes. He fed me enough to regain my strength but immediately siphoned the new blood from my veins, using it to create his own abominable vampire army. Had I not spared your life, you would have become the latest in a long line of victims to his growing lust for conquest.”

  Simon pushed away from the step and brushed the dust from his wrinkled suit.

  “Set me free,” the vampire urged. “Unbind my limbs and let me take my revenge on the chancellor. I want to atone for the sins of my past and putting an end to the vampire horde I helped create is the first step to that realization.”

  “I appreciate you sparing my life—”

  “Release me!” the vampire interrupted, begging as he already sensed Simon’s hesitation.

  Simon turned away from the vampire and walked toward the stone doors that led from the chamber. He had no weapons and would soon be walking into a den of vampires unarmed, but he saw few other options. Remaining in the presence of the elder vampire wasn’t feasible, since Martelus’ men would eventually return, expecting to collect their blood sacrifice. His only hope was that it was now daytime, and the vampires were slumbering in their alcoves. Simon paused and stroked his chin, wondering if the vampires even slept at all. His escape would be short-lived indeed if the vampires were awake as he passed through their barracks.

  “Have you no honor, no integrity? Even you, who Whitten warned was one of the best of your kind, lacks the honor to set me free even after I’ve spared your life. If you and Whitten’s kind are representative of your world of science, then you deserve to burn when the demon lords come to claim this land.”

  Simon turned sharply toward the archaic creature. “What did you say?”

  “I hope you burn,” the vampire spat, though even his attempt at disgust seemed abnormally feeble.

  Simon shook his head, no longer feeling disgust toward the vampire before him. “No, about the demons.”

  “The demon lords will cross through the Rift and enslave your world,” it replied.

  “Exactly how many demons are there?”

  The vampire seemed taken aback by the sudden shift in conversation. “Five of them,” it stammered. “What difference does it make? It will take but one of them to destroy you and your kind.”

  Simon smiled to himself. “No, it’ll probably take at least two by my count.”

  Before the vampire could respond, Simon placed his hands on his hips. “What do you know of the demon lords?”

  The vampire grasped the arms of his chair nervously as he spoke. “It has been ages since I left the land, so it’s possible those ruling have changed, but there were always five demon lords who ruled over our realm. Each possessed a special power, which gave them sway over the minds and souls of those under their rule. Their power was unbridled and unsurpassed, even by one as strong as me.”

  Simon heard him speak but fixated on the mention of controlling men’s minds, as he had experienced so recently upon his unfortunate encounters with Gideon Dosett. “You seem to have no love lost for these demon lords.”

  The vampire frowned. “If I was a savage in my youth, they would have been spiteful gods, tormenting and destroying those beneath them on little more than a whim. Perhaps my imprisonment has granted a different perspective to their brutality.”

  The Inquisitor stood in the center of the room and stared intently at the vampire. “Assuming the demon lords have already arrived, how can we stop them?”

  “You couldn’t, at least, not alone. You would need powerful allies with even more powerful abilities.”

  “Like yourself?” Simon asked.

  “Myself and others, like your traveling companions,” the vampire replied.

  “If the demon lords are here, not just in our kingdom but throughout our realm, would you fight for us if freed? Would you be an ally against a greater evil?”

  The vampire nodded slowly and attempted a smile that only drew the taut skin further across its skull. “Yes, if it will prove my good intent. I will stand with your kingdom against the demons.”

  Simon stroked his chin thoughtfully, feeling the now two-day-old stubble that covered his usually clean-shaven face. Mattie had proven herself an incredibly capable and trustworthy ally, not just in Haversham but since. It was possible, though even Simon felt hesitant to admit it, that the ancient vampire could be another unusual companion against a
growing evil at their borders. The threat of magic was growing. If Gideon Dosett was but the first of five demon lords, he would need powerful friends, indeed.

  “I’ll set you free from this prison, though not now,” Simon finally said after a lengthy pause.

  The vampire sighed disconcertingly.

  “You’re right, I owe you my life,” the Inquisitor continued. “I don’t know if your words were true or hollow, but I’ve been accused of being far too forgiving in the past, offering second chances to those who don’t deserve our benevolence. I see potential in you, vampire. When next I return to you, I promise that I shall take you from this prison once and for all.”

  The vampire nodded hesitantly. “I look forward to your return.” It pointed to the doorway behind Simon. “You should hurry before the sun rises and the vampires return to their berths.”

  Simon nodded toward the vampire before turning toward the stone doors once more. He pulled them open but paused at the doorway, glancing back once more to the weary vampire who, for the first time, raised his head proudly with a sense of hope. Despite the bindings on its wrist, the vampire raised his hand appreciatively. Simon nodded once more and hurried into the large chamber beyond, letting the door swing shut behind him.

  He collected a torch from the wall and held it aloft as he entered the debris-strewn room beyond the vampire’s carved prison. He stepped gingerly through the discarded waste, the whole while keeping his eyes averted from the pile of bloodless human remains he knew to be piled against the far wall.

  As he neared the center of the chamber and could finally see the narrow path leading upward toward the vampires’ barracks, he stooped and collected a pair of wooden stakes from the debris.

  Reaching the far side of the room, he rushed up the passage, knowing that whether the vampires had returned to the mines or not, his fate was already sealed.

  Luthor and Mattie sped through the dark forest, their every step dogged by vampires. The monsters moved with incredible speed, but the dense underbrush of the nearby woods allowed the two companions to stay ahead of their pursuers.