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

by Adam Thomas

  Sindar put a hand to his head and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I wouldn’t have thought them capable of this – not after they saved the orphanage.”

  “Perhaps they saw the orphanage job as a way to get into your good graces. In any case, my plan is to track them down and have an uncomfortable conversation.”

  “Thank you for your diligence, Chief Inspector Nar.”

  Nar rose from his seat, donned his hat, and touched the brim in salute. “Just doing my duty, Lord Mayor.”

  

  Three weeks had gone by since the B-Team’s uneasy truce with the vampire, Rosamund Steele. That was how long she said she needed to civilize Serafina Sindar before returning to the city and fulfilling her end of their bargain. The team went their separate ways for those few weeks and met back up at a tavern called The Honey Badger in Thousand Spires’ Trade Quarter North.

  “A toast,” Jeral said, raising his glass of wine. “To not getting killed by a vampire.”

  “So far,” Rhys added, clinking his stein to Jeral’s glass.

  Shonasir, Alurel, and Emric acknowledged the toast – Alurel with her characteristic mug of green tea. She breathed in the steam and sighed with contentment. “I had a great time off. What did you all do?”

  “I popped back to school to check in,” Shonasir said. “Professor Cloudchaser was surprised to see me. I feel a little guilty taking this time off. I think he really misses me as his lab assistant.”

  “He can get another one,” Alurel said. “You’re with us now. To the B-Team!” She raised her mug again and the others joined her.

  “Speaking of, I finally met Lord Day’s daughter Elendithas,” Emric said. “She was playing flute at a tavern up the road.”

  “How talented is the vaunted member of the A-Team?” Alurel asked, her voice dripping with acerbity.

  “I hesitate to answer,” Emric said.

  “That good, huh?”

  Emric nodded.

  “I also got this,” Shonasir said, holding up a waxy string they wore around their neck.

  “A boring necklace?” Jeral asked.

  “A deceptively magical boring necklace,” Shonasir countered. “I’ll show you when we’re not in a bar. I got it from the sweetest gnome in the world.”

  Alurel bobbed up down in her chair in obvious excitement. “Elsany the Enchanter?”

  “That’s the one. She has a little shop in the Trade Quarter South.”

  “We went there too! Elsany is such a dear. So kind and unassuming.” Alurel launched into a breathless story. “She didn’t have what I was looking for, so she directed me to find someone named Laeris in the Aril Forest. Rhys and Jeral went with me, and we found her. She’s an archdruid – super powerful and magical, and a half-elf like me. She gave me this little magical vial that I can put plants in and make potions. She lives alone as a hermit in the forest, but she was ever so welcoming.”

  “To you maybe,” Rhys said.

  “Oh right,” Alurel said, trying not to chuckle. “Laeris drugged Rhys because she doesn’t trust humans.”

  Rhys’s look of affronted honor was enough to set Emric and Shonasir laughing. “I told him,” Alurel said, “You’re the one who eats every mushroom he finds, so what’s the issue? You’re drugged half the time anyway.”

  Rhys crossed his arms, trying hard to keep his own smile at bay. It was hard not to join in the laughter, even if it was at his own expense, when all his friends were giggling. “All right, all right,” he said when the laughter died down. “Next round’s on me.”

  He went over to the bar and ordered more drinks. But he was too preoccupied to notice the man at the end of the bar, who was keeping an eye on their table.

  When Rhys returned, Emric was asking, “So why didn’t this Laeris poison Jeral?”

  “She had the Sight,” Jeral explained. “At least, that’s what she said. She could tell I wasn’t really a dragonborn. She says I have elven blood.” He accepted a second glass of wine from the barmaid, swirled the wine around in the glass, sniffed its bouquet, and took a long sip. “Must be from my father.”

  The server finished serving their drinks and then knelt down and put her elbows on the table. “It’s done,” she said.

  “Yes, thank you for the drinks,” Rhys said.

  “No, you fool,” she said, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “Go check the basement of Roseview.”

  They all turned and stared at her. Rosamund was once again disguised as Celia Cooper, though this time she had traded in her pointed elven ears for rounded human ones. She stood up and said, “Can I get you anything else?”

  Emric played along. “No, no. That’s all we need.”

  “You can settle up at the bar.” The glamoured vampire backed away from the table and vanished through the swinging kitchen door.

  “She’s so perfect,” Emric said dreamily to himself.

  Alurel snapped her fingers in front of the dwarf’s eyes. “Still charmed, are we?”

  Emric batted her hand away. “Where is this Roseview?”

  “Sounds like the name of a manor,” Shonasir said. “The Diamond Spire?”

  “Ask her,” came a gravelly voice. “She knows.”

  A human man with pale skin and a pale yellow beard pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards. He nodded in Alurel’s direction. “She was at Roseview before sunrise this morning.”

  “I was not,” Alurel said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Chief Inspector Ronin Nar of the Emerald Spire Guard.”

  Emric gripped Alurel’s wrist and said, “A little outside your jurisdiction, aren’t you, Chief Inspector?”

  “Oh, I’m not here in an official capacity. I just want to ask the half-elf a few questions.”

  “The half-elf is saying nothing,” Alurel said.

  “We’ll see,” Nar said. “You seem the talkative type.”

  “She is,” Jeral confirmed. Rhys punched him in the shoulder.

  “My agents were staking out Magnolia Hall following the disappearance of the owner, one Rosamund Steele, a woman of means of the Diamond Spire. She disappeared a month ago along with another well-to-do woman of the city, Serafina Sindar. I believe the latter, at least, is known to you.”

  Alurel scowled. She had disliked Serafina from the first, and that was before Serafina had nearly murdered her in the snow.

  Nar continued, “Late last night a copper-skinned half-elf woman was seen entering Roseview, next door to Magnolia Hall. Since then, no one has been able to locate Karin Astor, the owner of Roseview and a third prominent woman of the city. Tell me, where have you been stashing these women and what do you plan to do with them?”

  The accusation was so absurd that the team burst out laughing. Nar’s serious face grew even graver. “I assure you, this is no laughing matter.”

  “If you had any real evidence, you would not be here in an unofficial capacity, Officer,” Emric said. “As it is, all you have is a description of a woman who looks like my friend and an obvious prejudice against half-elves, like everyone else in this vixsik city.”

  Nar was about to respond when Jeral cut him off. “Besides, I heard a rumor earlier today that your first two supposed victims of this vast kidnapping conspiracy are back after an impromptu vacation. Sounds like the kind of thing rich people might do.”

  The chief inspector squeezed the back of his chair until his knuckles went white. “I was with Lord Sindar just this afternoon, and his wife was most certainly still missing.”

  “I’d check again if I were you,” Jeral said as he tipped the last of his wine down his throat.

  “Also, I think you owe my friend an apology,” Rhys said, and he cracked his knuckles menacingly.

  “Of all the impudence,” Nar said, and then he turned back to Alurel. “I will be watching you.” He po
inted to his own eyes with two fingers and jabbed them at Alurel. Then he pushed off from the table and stalked out of the tavern.

  “What was that all about?” Jeral asked.

  “I don’t know,” Alurel said with a sigh. “But I’m tired of people suspecting me of anything that seems to be wrong anywhere.”

  “I think it was Rosamund,” Shonasir said quietly. “Think about it. We already know she can change her appearance. What if she went into Roseview disguised as Alurel in order to turn this Karin Astor person?”

  “Why disguise herself as me?”

  “Insurance, I’d bet,” Rhys offered. “She wants to hold more cards in our little exchange. So if she can turn the Spire Guard against us…”

  Emric followed Rhys’s thinking. “Then we get caught holding the bag when we kill the new vampire. It will look like we murdered this Astor person. Rosamund is brilliant.” He looked at his friends who smirked at him. “Nefarious, but brilliant,” he amended.

  “She’s boxed us into a corner, that’s for sure,” Rhys said. “But we need that mist to help Jeral, and we can’t let a feral vampire loose on the city. I doubt her basement will hold her for long.”

  “So we go tonight,” Alurel said.

  “What about this Nar character?” Shonasir asked.

  “Let him tag along. Maybe the new vampire will do us a favor and eat him.”

  twenty-one

  Roseview

  The clock towers of the city were tolling midnight when the B-Team arrived in the Diamond Spire. Unlike anywhere else in Thousand Spires, the streets of the Diamond Spire were lit by gas-powered streetlights, the height of ingenuity for the wealthiest of the wealthy. Also, it kept the rabble elsewhere due to the inability to slink around. And the B-Team were most certainly rabble.

  Some blocks of the Diamond Spire held a single manor house nestled in the midst of wide grounds and gardens. Others held two manors on slightly less palatial estates. Roseview was one of these. Seaview would have been a better name given the house’s coveted location on the shore of the Eldasin Sea.

  “So Rosamund wants us to knock off her neighbor so she can have a better view?” Alurel asked.

  “Delightfully cold-blooded,” Emric said in a dreamy voice.

  “We’re not knocking anyone off,” Shonasir clarified. “She’s already turned the neighbor, which means this Karin Astor person is already dead.”

  Rhys groaned and pointed down the street. Chief Inspector Ronin Nar was walking toward them flanked by a pair of spire guards.

  “Returning to finish the job?” Nar called. “I thought you might.”

  “Good evening, Officer,” Emric said in his most innocent voice.

  Nar stopped about a dozen feet away and put his thumbs in his belt. “Non-residents and non-guests of Diamond Spire residences are not allowed in the district’s limits after tenth bell unless they are household staff coming or going from their place of employ.”

  “Then it’s a good thing we are guests of Lord Sondal Day whose house is just down the road.”

  “Lord Day?” That caught Nar flat-footed.

  One of the guards with Nar spoke up. “Ronin, you didn’t tell me the folks you were tailing were these mercenaries.”

  Haniya Rix stepped forward and turned to the chief inspector. “They do work for Lord Day. They helped me rid the Opal Spire ossuary of an infestation a month or two ago, on the minister’s orders.”

  Nar worked his mouth a few times before speaking. “So you’ve pulled the wool over the eyes of Lords Day and Sindar, eh? Were you planning on kidnapping Day’s wife too?”

  Alurel snorted. “You poor, silly man. You have no idea what you’ve fallen into.”

  Anger flashed across Nar’s face and his voice dropped low. “Then enlighten me.”

  “Tell you what,” Alurel said. “We’re going into the basement of Roseview. Come along if you like, but if the thing in there kills you, it’s not our fault.”

  “What thing? What are you talking about?”

  Rix patted Nar on the shoulder. “This team is, ah, unconventional. But they get the job done.”

  Jeral beamed. “We should make adverts that say that. I can see the broadsides now: ‘The B-Team: Unconventional, but Effective.’”

  “For all your corpse flower disposal needs,” Rhys added.

  The chief inspector would not let himself get distracted by the team’s antics. “What is in that house?”

  Alurel’s eyes went wide and she breathed in a short, expectant breath. “Do you really want to know?”

  “It’s why I asked the damned question,” Nar said, his small reserve of patience nearly spent.

  “That basement contains a brand new vampire,” Alurel said, and she smiled triumphantly as she watched Nar’s expression move from domineering to terrified in the space of a breath. “Still want to come with us?”

  For the first time, Nar just stood there, speechless.

  Rix chuckled and began backing away. “Vampires are above my pay grade. This one’s on you, Chief Inspector.”

  Nar began nodding to himself, and his eyes darted from one member of the B-Team to the next. They were undisciplined sellswords who had little respect for his position, but they did not seem to be lying. “Very well,” he said at length. “If what you say is true, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  He drew his sword and turned to face Roseview. Alurel threw her friends a look behind his back and Shonasir shrugged at her. Rhys couldn’t help himself. “You know how to use that blade, Chief Inspector?”

  “Of course I do, you brigand.”

  “It’s not just ceremonial then?”

  Nar ignored Rhys’s needling and stalked towards the house. Neither Roseview nor next door Magnolia Hall had any candles, lamps, or glowstones shining in their windows. All was dark save the waxing moon glittering on the nearby sea. They circled the manor and found a back entrance to the basement.

  “That’s odd,” Nar said, pointing to a thick rod of iron slid beneath the handles of the metal double doors. “Why bar the outside when an intruder could just slide out the iron?”

  “Use your head,” Alurel hissed. “Whoever put that there is trying to keep something from getting out, not getting in.”

  Nar sobered and squeezed the hilt of his blade. “You really think there’s a vampire in there?”

  “I don’t think. I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re not the only investigator here.”

  Rhys held a torch up to Shonasir, who lit it with their elemental magic. Then the big swordsman knelt down and pulled out the heavy iron rod with one hand. “Ready?”

  He flung up the door, expecting the vampire to jump them like Serafina had done to Jeral in the mine. But all was quiet to most of their ears.

  “I hear something,” Shonasir said. “Footsteps. Someone’s pacing.”

  “Don’t forget the mist,” Jeral said, as he followed Rhys down the dark stairwell.

  “You sure you want to come?” Alurel asked the chief inspector.

  Nar gritted his teeth. “If there’s a vampire problem in this city, it is my duty to root it out.”

  Alurel rolled her eyes at Nar’s self-righteous tone and watched him disappear down the stairs. When he was out of earshot, she said to herself, “If the vampire doesn’t eat you, I might.”

  The B-Team and the chief inspector reached the basement floor and still there was no undead menace. “If this is all an elaborate scheme to –” Nar began, but a thump down the hall startled him into silence.

  “This way,” Rhys said, pointing the torch in the direction of the sound.

  They reached another door, which was barred in the same way as the exterior one. The door was a heavy oaken slab, which shuddered under the impact of something within.

&nb
sp; Alurel smirked at Ronin Nar, who was trembling so much that his sword was dancing in his hand.

  “In, in, in the s-s-s-stories I’ve heard,” Nar stuttered. “Vampires seduce and beguile. They’re not mad beasts.”

  “New vampires are different,” Emric said. “All bloodthirsty instinct and nothing else. Give her no quarter.”

  In one quick motion, Jeral unbarred the door and Rhys barreled into the room swinging both torch and sword. The rest piled into the small space behind him. Rhys forced the vampire back, and in the flickering light of the torch, they saw an elderly woman, plump around the middle, whose face must have held a grandmotherly warmth – once. But now Karin Astor’s teeth were bared and her eyes were hot and red. She lunged at Rhys and knocked the torch out of his hand.

  An arrow from Shonasir grew from her side, but it did not faze her. Nor did Jeral’s eldritch energy slow her down. The vampire tore into Rhys with her claws, nearly taking him to the floor. But then Alurel’s moonbeam lit the space in silver light, which scalded the vampire’s skin. She snarled and backed out of its light, circling it to attack again. While she was alone in the back of the room, Emric let fly a fireball. It exploded in the enclosed space, catching the vampire in its blast, as well as everything stored in the cellar room.

  The flames grew quickly, and smoke filled the space. They fell back to the main chamber of the basement, and Karin Astor charged after them. She slashed at Shonasir, Jeral, and Alurel with her vicious claws as they peppered her with magical attacks, none of which had much of an effect. Something about the sharirana let the new vampire shrug off more wounding than any of them expected. Ronin Nar, his eyes wide with terror, fought gamely beside Rhys, and their swords flashed to keep the vampire’s claws at bay. More arrows from Shonasir struck her torso and arms, making her look like a grotesque pincushion.

  Again Alurel’s moonbeam forced her back, and a second fireball from Emric detonated in the enclosed space. The cellar was truly on fire now. They retreated to the stairs, and Karin Astor followed them. She had nowhere else to go, and the bloodlust was still on her, so she followed the pulsing arteries of her assailants. But six attackers proved too much, and her slashing claws grew more feeble with each swing. The chief inspector dealt the killing blow when he put his sword through her throat.