Shadow Phantoms

by H. P. Mallory

  Laucian shook his head and gave me another stern expression.

  “Tell me, Laucian, are you capable of smiling?”

  He glared at me. “The dignity of vampirism still means nothing to you?”

  “We are killers, Laucian,” I replied, unmoved by his arch tones. I started forward, intent on giving him a tour whether he wanted one or not. “I have learned to live with that, but I refuse to be proud of it. My vampires only drink the blood of willing victims and they do not kill. If the price I pay is three boatloads of orgies, then I shall pay it happily.” Then I turned to face him. “Tell me, Laucian, have you ever had an orgy?”

  “I am here on important business,” he responded. Clearly, that was a no.

  “I believe an orgy would do you good,” I continued. He did not respond, but I did not mind. I thrilled over the idea of his reaction to all the sex, nudity and depravity he was about to confront. Perhaps it would prove to be a good night, after all.

  We stepped into the hallway and the sex enveloped us. I had never appreciated it more.

  “My… this is…”

  “Ah,” I said and smiled. “You have lost your words.”

  I waited for the sharp comeback, but instead Laucian flashed a smile. “I will admit, it is impressive you have achieved this,” he started as he held his hands up, glancing around himself. He did not appear to be offended by the fornicating surrounding him. “Even if I do not like the means by which it has been achieved.”

  “I had thought you were all in favor of draining every virgin you could find.”

  Laucian pulled a rueful face. “Even virgins are not what they used to be.”

  “What are they now?”

  “Rare.”

  I could not help laughing. “That is certainly true on this ship. Come down to my cabin, we can talk properly and you can tell me why you have graced me with your dull presence.”

  A few minutes later, we were seated in the comfort of my state room. Laucian drew a bottle out from under his cloak.

  “Virgin blood,” he said. “The girl is still alive, if that concerns you. Though she is no longer ‘qualified’, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do.”

  I retrieved a couple of glasses as Laucian uncorked the blood and sniffed the bouquet. He seemed almost nostalgic. “She was so lovely.”

  I took the bottle and poured while Laucian swung off his cape with a flourish and made himself comfortable. “Tell me, perhaps I was mistaken, was there a couple making love over the billiard table when we passed?”

  I shrugged. “Well, it is actually a pool table and I am not sure I would call what they were doing ‘making love’, but otherwise; yes.”

  “Are you perhaps short of beds?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why…?”

  I shook my head. “That, I cannot tell you. I can only surmise it is for a bit of variation.”

  Laucian sipped the blood and said nothing.

  “You disapprove?” I asked, baiting him somewhat.

  “You approve?”

  “If they are happy then why should I object? It is their life to live.”

  I could see the distaste on his face. “This is a subject on which we will never be in agreement.”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “They are vampires, they should behave like it.”

  “They drink blood, what more do you want?”

  “There is more to being a vampire than drinking blood.”

  “Is there?” I asked as I tossed back my drink. “We may be ageless, but the world around us ages and if we do not change with it, then we cease to be relevant.” I looked at him with a cheeky grin. “And you, my dear sir, have ceased to be relevant.”

  Laucian scoffed. “I have never considered myself relevant... thus, I am afraid I do not care.”

  I smiled. “On that, we can agree.”

  For a moment his face was hard, but then it cracked into a smile. “Very well. I am an irrelevance. I am an anachronism. I am a dinosaur. So be it.” He reclined back in his chair.

  And it was hard to argue with that. If Laucian was a dinosaur—the analogy was as good as any other—then it was in the same way as James Bond. The super spy was a ridiculous anachronism, his tactics out of step with modern technology, his behavior outdated to the point of being embarrassingly offensive, like that elderly uncle at family gatherings who always insists on airing his views about foreigners. But somehow Bond remained forever cool, and so did Laucian, albeit in his own way.

  “I did not come here to verbally spar with you, Sinjin.”

  I nodded; I had surmised as much. “Why did you come? It cannot have been easy in that dastardly pirate ship of yours.”

  “She is faster than this bloated behemoth you are captaining.”

  “Faster is not necessarily better.” I replied, though even I thought Laucian’s clipper was significantly cooler than my three cruise ships. Of course, I would never admit as much to him. I had a reputation to uphold, after all.

  “I do like the names you chose for your ships,” admitted Laucian.

  “I thought they would appeal to you.”

  “It is good to know you have not completely lost touch with your roots. There is a vampire still inside you somewhere.”

  I sighed. “You were explaining why you came here.”

  Laucian nodded, his face growing serious. “You have heard of the Vryloka?”

  I nodded. “Of course. Everyone’s favorite vampire fairy tale.”

  But Laucian shook his head. “More than a fairy tale, Sinjin. They have returned.”

  I scoffed at this. “Returned? For goodness sake, Laucian, they never even existed! You have been drinking spiked virgin blood.”

  “The Vryloka were as real as you or me. They existed once and now they exist again.”

  “You have seen one, have you?” I put him on the spot.

  Laucian flinched. “Well, I have not seen one with my own eyes…”

  “Well, then.” I poured another glass of blood, hoping it was spiked. I could use a good hallucinogenic trip. “You and I have—how many centuries between us?”

  “Many.”

  “Quite right,” I said with a clipped nod. “We have been everywhere (or at least I have) and seen everything. You really think, in all those hundreds of years, if the Vryloka existed we would have missed them? Maybe they did back in the day, before even you and I were around, but not since then. And, Laucian, creatures do not just ‘return’.”

  “As far as you know.”

  “Did you miss the vampires and the bees lesson, Laucian?” I mocked him. “If so, let me fill you in: a mummy Vryloka and a daddy Vryloka who love each other very much, start to get certain urges…”

  “Do not patronize me,” Laucian kept his cool, but I could hear the steel beneath his words. “I did not come here to play games.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “To warn you. Vampires do not need a ‘mummy and a daddy’, do we? And the most powerful among us can even come back from dust, with enough blood. The Vryloka are related to us, who is to say they do not share more of our abilities? The Vryloka…”

  “Are a myth,” I interrupted him, making a fart sound with my lips. “If they ever existed (which I seriously doubted) then they are all gone now. What on earth makes you think otherwise?”

  Laucian levelled a cool stare at me. “A smarter man might have asked that question to start with, rather than pouring scorn before hearing the evidence.”

  “There is evidence, is there?” I was fairly comfortable pouring on the scorn. The Vryloka belonged alongside dragons, winged horses and talking cats. They simply were not real and it was rather embarrassing to hear a Master Vampire talking about them seriously. Perhaps the centuries of his strictly traditional lifestyle had finally caught up to him and Laucian was going senile.

  “I have word from people whom I trust,” said the geriatric.

  I shook my head; he was making thi
s too easy. “Oh well, I did not realize you had such ironclad evidence. I thought you were going to produce something tenuous like a photograph, but if you ‘have word’ then of course I believe you.” I paused. “I have word for you, as well. From my own trusted sources.”

  “Word?” he asked and leaned closer. “Of what?”

  “A new species of vampire rabbit.”

  Laucian frowned. “A what?”

  “Yes,” I said and nodded with emphasis. “This species of vampire rabbit is only to be found in the Cave of Caerbannog.”

  “The Cave of Caerbannog? I have not heard of it. Where is this cave?”

  I waved my hand because, of course, the cave did not exist. “On the British coast somewhere. Anyway, the cave is guarded by a mighty beast, the vampire rabbit, and was originally discovered by King Arthur and his knights. And Tim, the enchanter.”

  “King Arthur is a myth.”

  “Is he?” I asked, but did not allow him to continue. “At the approach to the cave, Sir Robin soiled his armor upon merely seeing the vampire rabbit, before everyone, with the exception of Tim the enchanter, pronounced it to be merely an innocuous white rabbit. Thus, ignoring Tim’s warnings that the vampire rabbit had a, and I quote: ‘vicious streak a mile wide’, King Arthur ordered one of his men to chop the rabbit’s head off without delay.”

  “And then?”

  “Then the knight drew his sword and confidently approached it. The rabbit suddenly leapt at least eight feet directly at the knight’s neck and bit clean through it in a single motion, thus decapitating him.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!” I insisted, nodding. “Then Sir Robin soiled his armor once again, and at Tim’s loud scoffing, the knights attacked in full force. But this rabbit was one of our own kind, my dear Laucian, and it defeated the knights with ease.”

  “Why have I never heard mention of this rabbit?”

  “Because the rabbit, such as the Vryloka, is a myth, you twit,” I snapped at him. “Actually, there is more proof for the existence of the vampire rabbit than there is for your Vryloka.”

  Laucian leaned back into his chair and frowned at me. “How so?”

  I shrugged. “There is a movie about King Arthur by those British chaps whose names escape me at the moment.” But, then I remembered. “Aha—Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I believe it was.”

  Laucian glared at me. “You just recited a scene from a movie?”

  “I did because I wanted to prove a point that just because you hear a story, does not make it true! And you, of all people, should know that!”

  Laucian reached into the inside pocket of his immaculate jacket and brought out a handful of photographs which he passed across to me.

  “You know, some people take pictures on their phones now,” I muttered as I took the pictures.

  “Stop talking for a bloody moment and look at them.”

  They were pictures of corpses. Five of them. All of them had, on their chest, a red circle.

  “The mark of the Vryloka,” he affirmed.

  “Or a hickey,” I suggested. “Or ringworm.”

  Laucian frowned. “What is a ‘hickey’?”

  “Love bite,” I explained. “An Americanism.”

  Laucian looked at me with polite horror. “Bloody hell, Sinjin. What has happened to you?”

  I did not respond. I looked down at the photographs before grumbling up at him. “Carry on.”

  “These people,” Laucian pointed at the photographs, “are spread across the globe. Two from Europe: one in France, the other in Italy. Two from the United States: Arizona and New York. One from the far east, in Japan. All separated by distance, yet they bear exactly the same mark.”

  “Five people in amongst a lot,” I replied. My tone remained dismissive but, truth be told, the pictures rattled me… a little.

  “Perhaps you should ask your question,” said Laucian, now feeling as if he had the upper hand.

  “Question?”

  “Do not play the fool, Sinjin. I know you too well. I know what you wish to ask.”

  Dealing with someone who was as powerful as myself was something I had not had to do for a while. I was not sure I liked it.

  “Do they have anything in common?”

  Laucian spread the photographs on the table between us as if he was about to read my fortune from them. “Two vampires. One Fae. One werewolf. One witch.”

  “No mortals?”

  “No mortals.”

  “But the Vryloka prey on mortals,” I pointed out, hastily adding, “So the legends say.”

  Laucian smiled. “The ‘legends’ also say they prefer to feed on supernatural beings. And these corpses are not just anyone. This man was a pack leader in Nagano Prefecture in Japan, one of the most powerful werewolves in the country. This witch ran a coven in New York. The Fae was King Odran’s envoy to Italy.”

  “I do not recognize the vampires.” The vast majority of the world’s vampires were now in my fleet, but a few, like Laucian, resisted.

  “I have not been able to find out much about the American,” admitted Laucian. “He may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this is Luc. He was one of my most trusted followers.”

  Other vampires who were traditionalists tended to gravitate to Laucian, and while he could not boast anything like the Vampire Coalition, he had a respectable number of disciples who looked up to him as their master and did his bidding as vampire subservients are supposed to.

  “It is not a lot to go on,” I hedged, unwilling to buy into it just yet.

  “I would call it a pattern.”

  “Of what?” I scoffed. “The Vryloka are targeting middle-management amongst the magical races?”

  “Building their way up,” said Laucian as he sat down and nodded at me in a way that said he believed he had won this argument. “Targeting people in power. And do not believe it is an accident this is happening now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I might not have been an active part of your Underworld society,” Laucian went on, “but under your queen Jolie, the factions had stability as never before. There was no way for creatures like the Vryloka to attack because they would meet the combined weight of all the Underworld. But now,” he spread his hands, “the factions are divided. No one will help each other. Now our enemies can pick us off. And the best way to start is to go after the leading members of each faction.”

  “Nonsense.” He was pulling conclusions out of thin air. It was all simply too fanciful.

  “And their families,” added Laucian.

  I felt a cold chill pass down my spine. “What?”

  Laucian’s red-rimmed eyes met my stare. “That begs the question.”

  “What question?”

  “Who is keeping an eye on that sweet young niece of yours?”

  I swallowed hard.

  “What is her name again?”

  “Emma,” I responded, her name tasting like acid on my tongue.

  SEVEN

  SINJIN

  “Alright. You have my attention.”

  “And it is about bloody time,” Laucian responded.

  I searched my mind for what I knew of the Vryloka from the old stories and legends. Their exact origins were no more than myth, but if they were real, then perhaps the myth was too.

  The original Vryloka was a powerful witch, who extended her life by draining the life-force from her victims—a somewhat distasteful process, I had always felt, compared to the cleanliness and simplicity of draining blood. Through her magic, this witch discovered she could turn normal vampires into ‘living’ vampires; creatures like her who drained life energy upon which to live. These vampires were what we now called the Vryloka, taking their name from their creator.

  When a vampire turns a human, an exchange of blood is required and it was similar for the Vryloka; they drained the life-force from their vampire victim and then conducted it back into the vampire, restarting their long-dead h
eart and reanimating them as a new entity. Their fangs retracted—they had no further need of them—their hair became a bright red and their pale skin was suffused with a pink tinge. Somewhat gaudy for my taste (I prefer a more sober color palette, myself.)

  The few surviving accounts of Vryloka attacks suggested they were a terrifying sight: streaming down from the sky upon their victims, their red hair flowing out behind them, their eyes flashing with incandescent power. They lay their lips upon the chests of their prey, making a perfect circle, and draw the life’s energy from the heart itself, until the body is no more than a husk.

  Quite disconcerting, I agree.

  I learned about these creatures from the vampire who turned me, Varick, six centuries ago, and even he spoke of them as a myth. The stories said the last flourish of the Vryloka was in the time of the Roman Empire (which covers a long period but stories of this sort are seldom specific). There had been a great war between the vampires and the Vryloka, for while the Vryloka preyed on all species (particularly the magical ones who had stronger life forces) it was only the vampires they could turn into their own.

  The idea of being turned into one of those creatures made the bile rise in my throat, and apparently vampires back then had the same reaction; they would sooner kill themselves than join the ranks of their enemy.

  There was a great battle (perhaps somewhere in Spain—again, the legends were unhelpfully vague) and the vampires were victorious. Such was the end of the Vryloka.

  Or, perhaps not.

  “How can we be sure?” I asked.

  Laucian shrugged. “We cannot. We may only know when they come for us.”

  I glared at him. “Laucian, how does one prepare for an attack of a legend?”

  “Indeed. The Vryloka are not troubled by daylight as we are. They have many of our strengths and few of our weaknesses.”

  “Surely we outnumber them?”