Vampire Mist: Ballad of the B-Team, Book One

by Adam Thomas

  Selenel was the biggest elf any of them had ever seen. They rivaled Rhys for height and breadth, which, by human standards, were already extreme. Their skin was purple trending toward red, and their head was shaved bald, making their pointed ears appear even longer. They wore a scowl on their face – perpetual by the looks of it – but whether it was a scowl born of ill-temper or undivided purpose no one could say.

  Shonasir decided to ignore the scowl and address their sibling with friendly formality. “Selenel, fyara. Ada sta yo.” (Selenel, peace. I honor you.)

  “Stow your honor, Shonasir. What do you want?”

  Their voice was gruff and to the point. Here was an elf who spent most of their time in silence and solitude. Their daily store of words was small to begin with. But they had called Shonasir by the name Ansilan had given them. Shineth had not done so the day before. That was a small thing. Perhaps there was hope for their request.

  Shonasir gave up the rest of their planned pleasantries and matched their sibling’s directness. “My companions and I need passage to the jungle on Starfall. Are you setting sail soon, and if so, can you drop us off?”

  “I fish alone, you know that.”

  Alurel stood on tiptoe and appeared over Shonasir’s shoulder. “We don’t want to help you fish. We just need a ride.”

  Selenel’s scowl deepened. “There’s only one bunk aboard.”

  “We don’t need bunks. We can sleep on the deck.”

  “And why should I help you?”

  Shonasir jabbed Alurel in the ribs gently, and the cheeky druid backed off. Shonasir spread their arms wide as in preparing to embrace, but they did not move towards their sibling.

  “Selenel, alve sta yon val raliron.” (Selenel, I need your generous assistance.)

  “You think asking in Elvish is going to change my answer?”

  “Tothfaelon,” Shonasir said in a perfect imitation of the shineth they shared with Selenel.

  A muscle twitched next to Selenel’s mouth, as if it were trying to find the right lever to activate a smile, but all the levers looked the same and the other ninety-nine triggered frowns.

  Selenel crossed their arms over their broad chest. “What’s this all about? You’re not just trying to stick it to Shineth, are you?”

  “Toth,” Shonasir said. “No. One of my friends is in crisis, and I’m trying to help him. We need something in the Starfall jungle.”

  “Dangerous place. Must be important.”

  “It is.”

  “Never pegged you for the helping type.”

  “You either. Maybe we both can change.”

  Selenel looked up at the sky and muttered under their breath. “Might be time enough. Close though.”

  “So you’ll take us?”

  The twitching muscle subsided, and Selenel’s face grew even graver. “I do this and you do everything I tell you while you’re aboard my boat. None of this baby of the family always getting their way nonsense.”

  “No nonsense. Aye, Captain, sir.”

  Selenel nodded to the Freedom’s Wake. “All right. Welcome aboard.”

  Rhys and Jeral helped Selenel load their equipment while Emric and Shonasir went to purchase food for the trip. Alurel could have kept them going on conjured goodberries alone, but the others agreed such extreme measures were for emergencies only. They set sail as the late morning tide went out, and Selenel tacked southeast towards the Twenty Tatters, the archipelago home of Sularil’s halfling population.

  To pass the time, Shonasir told their companions the story of the halflings’ arrival. “The way the story goes, one morning a few hundred halflings – or kinmikron (that’s what they call themselves) – just appeared out of thin air. They were confused and frightened and had no idea where they were. Nor did they know the way to the place from which they came. Luckily, my people found them and took pity on them. The four tribes of Daen convened and decided to give the Tatters and the adjacent peninsula to the halflings for their new home.”

  “Did they teleport here?” Emric asked.

  “I suppose so.”

  “I’ve been studying that kind of magic recently. I think I might be able to do it one day. But I’ve never heard of a group that large all teleporting at the same time.”

  “That part is a mystery. It’s eight hundred years old already. If it hasn’t been solved yet, I doubt it will be.”

  Jeral scratched his green-scaled snout and asked, “What are halflings half of?”

  “They prefer ‘kinmikron’ because of questions like that,” Selenel said from their place at the wheel. “Many of my clients are the little folk, so you best behave yourselves around them.”

  The sails caught the wind, and the Freedom’s Wake leapt across the waves. They made good time that first day, but as the journey wore on, the weather was against them. The trip through the Twenty Tatters, usually a seven day sail, took ten, and by the time the coast of Starfall was coming into view, Selenel was growing agitated. As the others disembarked, Shonasir felt a grip on their arm and turned to see Selenel visibly upset.

  “This trip is taking too long. I was hoping to get you back to Daen by –”

  Selenel broke off and swore under their breath. “Shonasir, do you trust me?”

  “Of course,” Shonasir said, a little too quickly.

  “This is no laughing matter. If you return from your mission, I will tell you something.”

  Shonasir nodded, wordless in their vexation.

  “I’ll be fishing off the coast,” Selenel said. “Make a fire on the beach to signal me. And be swift...the calendar works against us.”

  Shonasir splashed into the shallows and followed their companions into the jungle.

  last year

  Rosamund Tells All

  The high society membership of the Kindred Society enjoyed fireworks just as much as the lowest born street urchin begging for scraps in the Jasper Spire. And so it was on the final day of Festival that two dozen humans and one undead former human stood on the wide veranda overlooking the Eldasin Sea and waited for the show to begin. All twenty-four humans gazed at the dark sky, but the former human looked elsewhere.

  Rosamund Steele could not keep her eyes off Serafina Sindar. They had been together for about two years, and it was a mark of the distance in Serafina’s marriage that her husband was none the wiser. Or else he knew and preferred Serafina happy, even if he were not the cause. Rosamund had dismissed the latter possibility. She had met Pelagius Sindar on multiple occasions, and he was far from magnanimous.

  Serafina stood at the balcony in profile, her hands clasping the rail. She wore the elbow length crimson gloves that Rosamund had given her, which matched the lining of the sparkling black dress she wore, also a gift from Rosamund. The dress was slit up both sides – enough to see the red lining, but not enough for some elderly prude of the Society to wonder aloud whom Serafina hoped to attract in that outfit. She had a husband at home, after all.

  And she had a lover two people down the balcony. Rosamund’s eyes slid away from Serafina for a moment so no one would see her staring. Westcott Devonshire Price the Third stood between them, his arm around the waist of Pallas Hightower, whose twentieth birthday had passed a month before. Lord Hightower approved the match, partially on Rosamund’s recommendation, but Pallas was more interested in horses than suitors. Rosamund had overheard her in the powder room sighing loudly over how she’d rather be spending Festival at the Equestrian in Torniel, but a recent fire there had sent her home. Indeed, her new horse Witch Hazel handily beat out Devon for the lion’s share of Pallas’s powder room soliloquy. Rosamund made a mental note to advise Devon – ever the carriage-hailing city boy – to take riding lessons.

  Her gaze strayed to Serafina again. Rosamund simply could not look at anything else, even when the fireworks started. Serafina gasped at the colors exploding
in the sky. Rosamund watched the small of her back arch and imagined cupping her hands around her waist, feeling the soft flesh where back met buttocks, feeling the smooth skin of her belly, feeling her warmth. She was so warm. How Rosamund longed for warmth. She who was never bothered by cold still desired heat.

  Rosamund wrenched her eyes away from Serafina and made herself watch the finale of the fireworks. But her mind was far away. When she turned Serafina, she would no longer be warm. She would be a feral creature for a time, and then something new – still herself in essence, but who could say how undying would change her. Rosamund could barely remember who she herself had been in life. Samantha Esris was the sister of the first duke of Torniel of the Esris line and his chief diplomat. Rosamund remembered her biography, but not who Samantha had been in her personality, her core. Had she been like Rosamund – seeking pleasure and influence above all else – or were those vampiric traits that developed after her encounter with Apranashar? If so, would Serafina begin displaying them too? Would she become a rival or remain a lover? Would they have the eternity Rosamund desired?

  Rosamund looked down to find that she had squeezed the metal railing a bit too hard and mangled it. Thankfully, everyone else was still dazzled by the last burst of color, and no one saw her slip away. She exited the Kindred Society’s headquarters by the servants’ entrance and stood in the dark atop the retaining wall above the midnight sea. League Year 271 had officially begun with the last of the fireworks. She had been alive and then undead for over half the length of time the Sularin League had been in existence. It was nothing compared to the dwarves or elves or, especially, Apranashar, who had been an old elf even before they were turned. For a moment, her mind flashed to the network of caverns burrowing into the Eastern Mountains at the northern edge of the Dasost Forest. There Apranashar waited, alone, thinking their solitary thoughts. If they hadn’t been turned, they would have returned to Karanathan at least twice by now. But no, a vampire could do no such thing.

  There were many things vampires could not do, like be with their lover in the daylight. Rosamund turned as her sharp ears picked up the sound of bare feet moving across the grass. Serafina held her shoes in one hand and a piece of crystal stemware in the other.

  “I was wondering where you’d gone,” she said.

  “Sometimes the crowd gets to me,” Rosamund said, not untruthfully.

  “Did you like the fireworks?”

  “I liked watching you watch them.” Rosamund slid her hand to the spot on Serafina’s back that had arched during the show.

  “Not here. People can see us.”

  “It’s dark. The show’s over. Everyone’s back inside.”

  “Devon and Pallas aren’t.”

  “I think they’re preoccupied.” Rosamund glanced up to the balcony. “At least Devon is.”

  Serafina chuckled. “I like Pallas Hightower. She knows what she loves and it isn’t anything about her suitors.” She sighed. “I wish I had been so self-possessed at her age. Then perhaps I would not have married Pelagius.”

  “If you hadn’t married Pelagius, we would never have met. I came to see him at first, remember?”

  “Like it was yesterday.”

  Rosamund lifted the glass from Serafina and placed it on the wall. Taking Serafina’s hand in hers, she began walking along the wall in the direction of her manor. Away from the hubbub of the Society’s new year’s party, everything was quiet. Candles here and there burned in the windows of the Diamond Spire’s mansions. The Eldasin Sea lapped against the wall to their left. They walked on and the silence grew tense. Unspoken words piled between them like a shovel trying to scoop up too much snow. By the time they arrived in the backyard of Karin Astor’s manor, which blocked Rosamund’s from a clear view of the sea, the silence had become a third participant in their stroll.

  Finally, the silence passed them by and they stopped, turned to each other, and spoke at the same time.

  Serafina said, “I want to leave my husband.”

  Rosamund said, “I’m a vampire.”

  Their eyes went wide.

  “You are?”

  “You do?”

  The silence dashed back. This time they pushed it away.

  Serafina said, “I knew it was something. You’re just too much, there’s just too much you to be a normal person. But...but…” She turned to the sea and looked off into the dark distance.

  Rosamund let go her hand so she could run if she wanted to. Rosamund had sworn to herself she would let Serafina go, would swear her to secrecy and let her live. And yet, in this pent moment before Serafina said anything more, Rosamund had a wild desire to take her now, to drain her and dump her body in the sea so that Rosamund wouldn’t have to hear the words she dreaded to hear.

  Her fangs appeared unbidden for the first time since she was Lorelei Crane. She glared hungrily at Serafina, who was still staring out to sea.

  Then Serafina said, “I think I’ve known for a long time. There are so many little things that make sense now.”

  She wasn’t running.

  Rosamund dared to hope. She whispered, “Look at me. See me for who I truly am.”

  Serafina turned and took an instinctive step backwards. Her foot slipped on the edge of the retaining wall, and Rosamund moved with her natural vampiric speed to steady her. Now that Serafina knew, there was no reason to hide her abilities.

  Rosamund let go of her again. She needed Serafina to feel safe to flee if she wanted to. But Serafina reversed her instinctive step. She moved closer to Rosamund and put her hand on her cheek.

  “So cold. Always so cold,” Serafina said.

  She leaned in and kissed Rosamund’s fanged mouth. “Same lips.”

  She ran her fingers through Rosamund’s long, curly hair. “Same beauty.”

  She pulled Rosamund into an embrace. “Same you.”

  Rosamund buried her face into Serafina’s neck. If she could weep, she would have done so. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for so long.”

  “Why did you tarry?”

  “I was afraid.”

  “I can’t imagine a vampire is afraid of anything.”

  Rosamund pulled herself back and held Serafina at arm’s length. “I’m afraid of losing you – tonight because of my secret or in fifty years when you die.”

  Serafina brushed her dark hair off her shoulder, baring her neck to Rosamund. “Then make me like you. I want to be with you forever.”

  Rosamund’s smile spread across her face, and she didn’t care that her fangs were showing. She had always thought they marred her appearance, but now with Serafina looking upon her with love, she knew even her vampire’s teeth were beautiful.

  “Soon, soon. There are things I need to prepare up north. Until the day comes, we must remain as we are. Keep up the act with your husband for a few more months, and then we will be together.”

  “Forever,” Serafina said, and she leaned in for another kiss.

  thirteen

  Basilisk Venom

  The companions trudged due west into the jungle until the sun was directly overhead and shining green through the multi-storied canopy. The tallest trees grew straight up with no branches until they were a hundred feet in the air. Another level of trees grew beneath the giants in a seeking sort of way, their multiple trunks and limbs stretching out diagonally and searching for the light. The lowest level of plant life grew near the ground – thorn bushes and vines that made travel difficult through the pathless jungle.

  Alurel had been leading the way, but now she stopped and turned to the others. “I have no idea where I’m going,” she confessed.

  “Aren’t you from here?” Jeral said.

  “I’m from the desert part of Starfall, not the jungle. I’ve never been here before.”

  Jeral got down on all fours and began shuffling around in a circle.
“If I were a basilisk, where would I be? I’m a big lizard. I have six legs. I turn things to stone and eat them.”

  The others watched him prancing about for a time until Alurel looked over at Rhys and saw him munching on something.

  “Rhys, what are you eating?”

  “Just a mushroom I found earlier.”

  Alurel slapped it out of his hand. “Have you completely lost your mind? It could be poisonous. It could kill you.”

  Rhys scanned the ground for where the mushroom landed. “Tasted pretty good.”

  “Do me a favor. The next time you want to eat something you find in the jungle, run it by me first, all right?”

  “All right, all right,” Rhys said, throwing up his hands. “Can I finish that mushroom now?”

  Alurel retrieved the stalk of the fungus, sniffed it, and breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s just a truffle. You can finish it.”

  Rhys popped the rest in his mouth and chewed. “I never knew how good mushrooms were. Let’s find more!”

  Alurel snapped her fingers. “That gives me an idea.” She bent low and eyed the ground ahead of them. “Here are some. Before you eat them, I want to talk to them.”

  Emric said, “Excuse me, talk to the mushrooms?”

  “Sure. Your people talk to rocks, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but we don’t expect them to respond.”

  Alurel grinned. “Watch this.”

  She lay on her belly and placed a delicate finger on the cap of the nearest cluster of mushrooms. A verdant flash of druidic magic sparkled around the cluster. Alurel said, “Truffles, can you hear me?”

  “We can ’ear you,” the mushrooms said, and Alurel looked up at her companions, her eyes glinting in triumph.

  The others stared down at her, nonplussed.

  “They talked!” Alurel said.

  Jeral nodded slowly. “If you say so.”