by Adam Thomas
nineteen
The Chase
Before anyone could react, the feral vampire was on top of Jeral and tearing at him with her claws. In seconds, the dragonborn’s body looked like the bear outside.
“Serafina, no!” Rosamund screeched.
Rhys lunged at Serafina and tackled her off Jeral’s body. They hit the ground together and rolled once, leaving the vampire on top. Rhys was twice Serafina’s size, but her undiluted vampiric strength was more than a match for him. She held him down and sank her teeth into his neck. He tried to buck her off by twisting his hips, but the motion was too feeble to shift her. Rhys’s focus flew to the pain in his neck where the blood was leaving his body too quickly. All he could hear were the sounds of slurping and distant wordless shouts.
An arrow struck Serafina in the shoulder, and Shonasir’s Awakened Flame blossomed into existence. It menaced the vampire, who scuttled away at its touch. In panther form, Alurel leapt over her prone companions and lashed out at the vampire. The big cat and the flame moved towards her as another arrow from Shonasir buried itself in the flesh between her right breast and collarbone. Serafina snarled and leapt at the panther, but before she could reach Alurel, Rosamund was there, dragging her away from the fight.
The feral vampire was stronger than her sire, and it was all Rosamund could do to hold her at bay. “Help me!” Rosamund called, and Emric bounded forward. Together they lifted Serafina and carried her down the passage.
As Alurel gave chase, she heard Emric’s voice echoing down the tunnel. “Why are we helping this vicious creature, Celia?”
“My name is Rosamund Steele, and we are helping her because she is my lover and you are under my sway. Get it?”
“Got it,” Emric said.
“Good. Now tell me, how did you get here?”
“We took a carriage. It’s parked outside.”
“Show me.”
Alurel knew she was no match for a pair of vampires and her obviously charmed friend, so she stalked them from a distance. They reached the entrance to the mine and vanished into the cold, moonlit night. Alurel hurried after them and threw caution to the wind when she saw Emric stepping up to the driver’s seat of the carriage. She was nearly in pouncing range when Rosamund turned to the panther and said, “Not just now, I think.”
Rosamund waved her hand and a swirl of silver-blue magic engulfed Alurel. Suddenly she found herself floating through an endless sea of nothing, banished from the Material World. The vampire’s spell ended a minute later, and Alurel returned to materiality. But the carriage was gone. The panther dashed back into the mine and found Shonasir bending over the fallen Rhys and Jeral. Rhys was holding the elf’s bunched up cloak against his throat, while Shonasir tended to the dying Jeral.
Alurel reverted to her half-elven form, cradled Jeral’s head in her hands, and surged her most powerful healing magic into him. The slash marks across his face, neck, and body knitted themselves back together, and his eyes flew open.
“What happened?”
“You released a mad vampire,” Alurel said as she moved on to Rhys. Another healing spell stopped the flow of blood, but it could not replace the copious amount he had lost.
“Did we get its mist?”
“No. She got away.”
Shonasir looked up from Jeral’s body. “Where’s Emric?”
Alurel shook her head. “The other woman, that Celia. Her name is actually Rosamund and she’s got Emric under her sway. I’d bet anything she’s also a vampire.”
“So it’s true,” Shonasir said. “Didn’t you see? The feral one was Serafina Sindar.”
“We have to go after them,” Jeral said. “We need to save Emric. This is all my fault.”
“Can you two move?” Alurel asked.
Rhys responded by sitting up. “I’m a little dizzy, but I can go.”
“Your spell’s working wonders,” Jeral said as he tried to do the same and failed. “But help me up, all right?”
Shonasir and Alurel heaved Jeral to his feet, and the four companions hurried out of the mine.
“The ski tracks go that way,” Shonasir said.
Jeral swore under his breath. “We’ll never catch them on foot.”
“No need,” Alurel said, and she ran over to a nearby holly bush. Plucking a handful of berries, she cast them into the air and drew a tall circle, which shimmered with emerald green energy. With a ululating cry, Alurel finished her spell, and the portal opened. Stepping through were four spectral green reindeer and four wolves.
“Mount up,” Alurel said.
The sure-footed reindeer bore their riders easily and shot forward, cascading snow in high, arching wakes. The wolves howled in unison and followed. Ten minutes of hard riding brought them in sight of the carriage. The moon reflecting off the snow lit everything in a soft, serene, silver light – so at odds with the dire chase...
...And with the twelve-foot tall yeti who crashed through the trees at the rumbling of the carriage. The white-furred monster loped after the coach, all the while growling its rage to the night sky. The pursuers were now chasing the carriage and the yeti, and the problem was that they were closing the distance.
The hulking beast swung its head to take in the four reindeer riders. It skidded to a halt in the snow and breathed out a great breath of intense cold. Jeral and Rhys were riding on either end of the foursome, and the breath did not touch them. Shonasir and Alurel were not so lucky.
The freezing breath hit their reindeer mounts, and they winked out of existence. The two riders launched forward through the air and tumbled into the snow. The yeti now had easy targets, and it ignored the carriage and the other two reindeer, which now galloped past it. The behemoth stalked forward, bellowing now in triumph.
Alurel’s conjured wolves emerged from the trees and leapt onto the yeti. Their spectral bodies distracted it just long enough for Alurel to roll toward Shonasir.
“Get on top of me,” Alurel said, and without a word, Shonasir obeyed.
Alurel wild shaped into a magnificent elk and, bearing Shonasir, rejoined the chase. The yeti slashed at the wolves until they all vanished and then lumbered back into the trees in search of slower prey.
In the meantime, the carriage kept up its pace, sliding easily over the snow on its skis. Emric drove, while Rosamund sat next to him. They could hear Serafina resume her mindless destruction of the coach’s interior, and in the distance the sound of galloping coming nearer.
“I apologize, my pet, but it is going to get a bit cold,” Rosamund said, and she unlatched the four catches, which held the driver’s canopy in place. It flew off into the night, and Rosamund pulled herself onto the coach’s roof.
She and Jeral traded blasts of eldritch energy, but the jostling motion of coach and reindeer disrupted their aim. Rhys tried firebolts from his karest. They hit the back of the coach harmlessly. From behind them, they heard the elk charging. It was larger and faster than the conjured reindeer, and Alurel blew past them. Shonasir bit their lip and sighted an arrow at Rosamund. But at the last instant, they changed their mind and fired just ahead of the carriage.
The arrow took one of the draft horses in its flank, and it stumbled. The carriage careened wildly, flinging Rosamund from the roof. The fallen horse dragged the others to a stop. Alurel charged the carriage, lowering her antlered head, and slammed into the door just as Shonasir leapt from her back and onto their Awakened Storm. The door splintered inward, and Serafina leapt at the elk’s long, graceful neck. In the few seconds it took for Rhys and Jeral to arrive, the feral vampire had destroyed Alurel’s elk form and, once Alurel reappeared, had slashed her throat as well. Alurel’s blood arced into the air, catching the moonlight, before a drop of it fell on Emric’s cheek. The horror of what the vampire was doing to his friend broke the charm he was under.
The dwarf sang out a quick spell o
f magical healing for Alurel, and she managed to roll under the carriage away from the vampire. Emric made to leap from the seat, but Rosamund appeared at his side and grabbed him by the arm in an unbreakable grip.
The final two reindeer mounts had vanished when Alurel fell, and now Rhys walked forward, swords in hand. He called out, “Peace, peace! We need not kill each other.”
But there was no reasoning with a new vampire. Serafina’s eyes were full of bloodlust: there were so many hearts pumping blood, and she would have them all. She moved like lightning towards Rhys, who managed to strike the pommel of one of his magical swords just in time. For once, the experimental magic imbued in the pommel’s stone worked, and Rhys stepped through Ethereality and appeared atop the carriage. Serafina’s momentum carried her into the snow, where she thrashed and snarled.
“I can soothe her,” Emric said to Rosamund. “Let me go and I’ll try.”
Rosamund released her grip, and Emric scrambled up next to Rhys on the coach’s roof. From there, the bard cast a pattern of hypnotic lights around the feral vampire. The charm would have worked had sharirana not been pulsing through Serafina’s brain, crowding out all other thoughts and feelings. Instead, the feral vampire screeched in rage and swung her head this way and that, looking for another target. Alurel had buried herself in the snow beneath the carriage. Shonasir, Rhys, and Emric were out of reach, which left only Jeral, who was still weak from the earlier mauling.
But before the new vampire could fully orient on the dragonborn, Rosamund’s voice rang out. “Serafina, here.”
She looked in the direction of her sire’s voice and smelt the blood pouring from the injured horse, whose neck Rosamund had just slit open. Serafina bounded to her side and began draining the horse in great, sloppy gulps.
Rosamund stood over Serafina and held out her hands. She looked at each companion in turn. Shonasir, still riding the storm, had an arrow nocked and pointed at her. Jeral held energy in his fists, ready to fling. Quiet groans and sobs drifted out from under the carriage. Emric clambered down and pulled Alurel’s maimed head into his lap.
Rhys remained on the carriage’s roof, spinning his swords in his hands, and waiting for Rosamund to make the next move.
“You sue for peace,” she said. “You say we need not kill each other. If that is so, then why did you attack me and mine when we were minding our own affairs as far from civilization as one can get?”
“Lord Sondal Day sent us to investigate pockets of undead spreading across Torniel and Sul,” Rhys said. “They cropped up in a straight line, which led us here.”
This revelation made Rosamund pause. She whispered to herself, “The necromancer’s magic. It was more powerful than I thought.” Then bearing her fangs, she looked up at Rhys. “So Lord Day knows you’re here. Anyone else?”
“Her husband,” Emric said. “He tasked us to find Serafina.”
Rosamund chuckled mirthlessly. “Which is it? Were you hunting zombies or runaway brides?”
“Both, actually,” Emric said. “Our two missions happened to converge in your mine.”
“Bad luck for me, then,” Rosamund said. “I do not care how many arrows and how much magic you have trained on me. You will not kill me, no matter your boasting. But my Serafina – she is strong, yet brittle, in this stage. I fear what might happen to her if violence resumes. And if she died, there would be nothing you could do to keep me from ending each of your pitiful lives.”
She stroked Serafina’s hair, and the tenderness of the gesture was incongruous with the threats she was making. “However, I value my privacy more than anything. I brought Serafina here to re-civilize her, when I could have let her rampage across the city. So, you see, I am in a quandary. On the one hand, you know my secret; therefore, I should kill you now. On the other hand, I don’t want Lord Busybody wondering where you disappeared to. Five people in the employ of the Minister for League Affairs vanishing near the recently closed Kindred Society mines would raise too many questions.”
Rosamund smiled, broad and indulgent, but it did not reach her cold eyes. “So we are at an impasse. I am open to suggestions.”
Emric had broken free of Rosamund’s charm, but the lingering effects remained, and he found himself nodding along as she spoke. Before he could catch himself, he blurted out, “We need vampire mist.”
Rosamund’s smile morphed into a snarl as she rounded on the dwarf. “Excuse me?”
“Vampire mist, for a potion. The dragonborn over there, he needs –”
But Rosamund cut him off. “I don’t care what he needs. Your story has changed again. First you’re hunting zombies, then you’re looking for Sindar’s wife, and now you say you need to kill one of us for some concoction?” Rosamund was now quivering with barely contained rage, but she mastered herself, and spoke with a calm that was more unnerving than yelling would ever be. “You will speak plainly, and then I will decide if I am to risk Lord Day’s scrutiny.”
Emric stood up and held her gaze as he explained, “The vampire mist is for a potion of restoration. We need to hurt a vampire enough to make it – her, them – turn into mist, and then we need to capture the mist before it flies away.”
“A tall order on all counts,” Rosamund said. “Tell the elf in the sky to lower their arrow, and I will offer a solution.”
Emric looked up to Shonasir and nodded. Shonasir slackened their bowstring. Rhys sheathed his swords. Jeral discharged his magic into the snow and ran over to tend to Alurel.
“That’s better,” Rosamund said. “Now, first things first. You will stipulate that your party is entirely in the wrong tonight for invading my affairs.”
The residual charm effects caused Emric to nod more vigorously than he might have otherwise. “We should never have bothered you,” he agreed.
“So what I am about to propose I do from the goodness of my heart and not because I actually feel threatened by you. Is that clear?”
“Crystal.”
“Good.” Rosamund broke eye contact with Emric for a moment to help Serafina find her way back into the carriage. After gorging herself on the blood on an entire horse, the feral vampire appeared sleepy, almost drugged. When Rosamund re-emerged from the coach, she said, “Now that we have that settled, I have a proposition, which may be mutually beneficial. You need a vampire, and I want a shoreline address.”
twenty
The Missing Socialites
Chief Inspector Ronin Nar of the Emerald Spire Guard had no sense of humor. This was the conclusion of more than one potential paramour over the years and was always offered at the moment such potentiality turned into rejection. So these days, Nar threw himself wholly into his investigative work. After all, he did not need to be funny with witnesses and suspects. At the moment Nar had two cases going. The first was a search for a distributor of illegal pipe weed from the Falling Leaf Islands. The drug itself was not illegal to possess, but bypassing customs was another matter. The city of Thousand Spires would take its cut. So far the inspector had come up empty, and he chafed at what he saw as a worthless assignment. Nar suspected he had pulled this case as a punishment from his superiors after the debacle at the Emerald Orphanage. Apparently, the Lord Mayor of the Emerald Spire thought his law enforcement should know about evil hags in disguise.
But now that same Lord Mayor had requested him personally to spearhead the second case: the disappearance of the Lord Mayor’s own wife. On that account, at least, Nar had been more productive, and now he sat across a wide desk of dark-stained cherry from Lord Pelagius Sindar.
“I have good news and bad news,” the chief inspector said. “Which would you like to hear first?”
“No games, Nar. Just tell me plainly.”
Sindar was usually more polite than this, Nar noted. Even when he was excoriating you about secret hags. Sindar looked haggard, anxious. The disappearance of his wife must have been cau
sing him much distress. Unless...he had made Serafina disappear and called on the inspector to deflect attention. Nar narrowed his eyes as the wheels turned in his mind. No, he did not suspect Sindar. He actually rather liked him, which was odd when Nar considered the nobility. Of all the nobles in the city, Sindar was the closest to a working man, in that he built his fortune from nothing. This kept him from thinking he was above the law.
“The bad news is that I haven’t found your wife yet,” Nar said. He spoke plainly, without a hint of sympathy or consolation.
Sindar let out a restrained sigh. “I figured as much,” he said. “I sent a party of sellswords after her, and they haven’t checked in yet either.”
Nar leaned forward, his eyes alight with interest. “This is news to me. Can you give me their descriptions?”
Lord Sindar rattled off a general accounting of the looks and heritages of the members of the B-Team.
“Eclectic group,” Nar said, tapping his pencil to his cheek. “And you say they came to see you after Serafina vanished?”
“That’s right.”
“And when we first met, you told me you thought your wife’s best friend had kidnapped her. Rosamund Steele of the Diamond Spire?”
Sindar steeped his fingers beneath his chin. “You think these sellswords were in on the kidnapping?”
“I think it was awfully convenient for them to approach you in your vulnerable state. And I would have been inclined to believe you about Ms. Steele if not for a third disappearance of a member of the Kindred Society, reported just today. That’s the good news – not the disappearance, the new lead.”
Sindar’s eyes went wide. “Who?”
“Karin Astor of Roseview of the Diamond Spire.” Nar flipped through the pages of his notebook. “That makes three disappearances of women from the Kindred Society in the last few weeks: your wife, Miss Steele, and Ms. Astor. My agents are staking out Roseview as we speak, as well as Miss Steele’s manor next door. If someone is kidnapping wealthy women of the city, I would suspect we would hear ransom demands soon. And I would wager your sellswords are in on the caper.”