Attempted Vampirism

by L. G. Estrella

  “I don’t think we should eat it.” He pointed at the strange, bulbous growths that covered its body. Old, clotted blood oozed out of them, and its flesh was a strange, greyish colour. “I think it’s been corrupted as well.”

  “A pity.” Blue Scales shook his head. “I was looking forward to it. It was a delicacy amongst my people.” He motioned for them to stand back. “Leave this to me.” The merman took three big steps and hurled his trident at the creature. The weapon dug deep into the creature’s side, and Blue Scales pointed. “[Lightning Bolt]!”

  A massive bolt of lightning crackled down from the sky. It struck the trident and flowed into the giant octopus. The beast gave a long, hideous shriek, but it wasn’t dead. As it raised one of its tentacles to strike, Blue Scales repeated his Word twice more. Finally, the giant octopus fell. It gave one last wheezing cry before sinking back into the moat as the scent of burnt calamari filled the air. Blue Scales whispered another Word, and a tendril of water yanked his trident free and tossed it back to him. Despite being struck by lightning three times, the weapon was completely unblemished.

  “Are you sure we can’t eat it?” Blue Scales asked. “It smells great.”

  Jonathan grimaced. “Unless you want to end up looking like it does, I’d avoid eating it.”

  Blue Scales peered into the water. Even in death, the octopus made for a troubling sight. Many of the strange growths along its body had burst, spewing poisons and other, foul fluids into the water. “Good point. We’ll have to do something about the water too.”

  Jonathan made a face. The water had been murky to begin with. Now, it was truly horrific, not unlike bloody, mud-filled muck. “We can fix it once we’re done. For now, it might be better to save our strength.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything else he might have forgotten to add to the map,” Eric grumbled as they made their way toward the front door of the manor. “Because someone not mentioning a giant squid kind of makes me worried that there might be – I don’t know – an ancient hydra in the lobby or a hungry dragon in the pantry.”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Jonathan stopped in front of the door. The metal surface of the door was covered in symbols that glowed whenever someone touched it, a testament to the maker’s concerns about security and durability. “The door is protected by magic. Breaking it might take a while, but Baron Darkletter gave me instructions on how to open it.” He made several arcane gestures and then flared his magic as the baron had instructed. Only a vampire of noble blood could have opened the doors this easily. To his dismay there was only darkness beyond the door. None of the light spells, candles, or lanterns that should have lit the interior of the manor were active. “It’s dark inside. We should be careful. Aria and Miles, can you two manage?”

  Miles nodded. “I know Words that can enhance vision.” He waved Aria over. “Let me use one on you. It will be better than using your generic magic or your Words to create light.”

  “Agreed.” Aria chuckled. “It’s a lesson every paladin learns, often the hard way. Walking around in the dark surrounded by light is a great way to make yourself a target.”

  They made their way past the front doors, and Eric pointed at the walls. As a werewolf, he had no problems seeing in the dark. “See those?” Thick tendrils of corrupted flesh ran along the walls, floor, and ceiling. They even pulsed as though in time to some giant, alien heart. “We’re definitely in the right place.”

  * * *

  Like most werewolves, Eric liked to think he was a sensible, practical, and down to earth person. It was better to leave all of the parlour tricks, pointless sophistry, and needless bickering to the vampires and elves. Werewolves all had jobs to do, and they liked to be good at them. Loyalty to pack and clan was important, and there was a big difference between healthy competition and treachery. Given his attitude toward common sense, walking into a manor that had clearly been infested by some kind of ancient evil wielding eldritch powers from only the gods knew where was not something he would normally have done. Sure, killing a hydra was dangerous, but it was also straightforward. All a hydra wanted to do was to kill him. It wasn’t going to devour his soul or cast his essence into the broken, fraying chaos of the Beyond.

  On the other hand, he was bored, and he needed to eat. Earning money was essential, and this mission had already proven itself to be the opposite of boring. Of course, great pay wouldn’t be much good if he wasn’t around to spend it, which seemed more and more likely the deeper they went into the manor.

  “Damn,” he muttered. “Forget the freaky tendrils and the wall over there that I’m pretty sure is alive, someone here really had a thing for blood.” Behind him, Jonathan was trying very hard not to throw up. Vampires might like blood, but the blood splattered all over the place here was vampire blood. At the centre of the chamber, not far from the stairs that led to the manor’s upper floors, was a large altar. He motioned for the others to keep back as he crept toward it, wary of traps. It did not escape his notice that the many tendrils of mutated flesh that crisscrossed the walls, floor, and ceiling all connected to the altar.

  The poor bastard on the altar was dead. They must have bled him dry too. It was one of the few ways to kill a non-Ancient vampire that kept the body relatively intact. He snarled. It was one of the slowest, most horrible ways to kill a vampire. His pack would only ever have killed the most treacherous and dishonourable of vampires that way. There was no glory to it, no honour. He walked around the altar twice to make sure it was safe before he beckoned Jonathan forward.

  “Can you tell us anything about this?”

  The scholar swallowed thickly. To his credit, he’d held his nerve so far. “Eldritch entities can’t usually stay in our world for long. They’re not a part of it, and the world itself rejects them. What they need is an anchor, something to bind them to this world. Souls have power, and blood is linked to the soul. This is especially true for vampires given our unique… constitution.” He leaned over to examine the symbols etched onto the dead vampire’s flesh – symbols that were all over the altar as well. “The more… things, our enemy created, the more anchors he needed to keep all of them here. This poor fellow was one of them. There’s no point in destroying the altar. Once the ritual is complete, it’s too late. Besides, rituals like this have been banned for thousands of years. Even scholars like me aren’t entirely sure how they work. If we destroy the altar, there’s a chance something might go wrong.”

  “I’m going to guess we don’t want that.”

  “If we’re unlucky, it could rip a whole in reality, allowing countless nightmares from the Beyond to spill into the manor.” Jonathan murmured a Word. Eric wasn’t familiar with [Capture Memory], but he could guess what it did.

  “But someone from the Blood Emperor’s era might know about this ritual.” Aria scowled. “It’s the one you told us about, isn’t it, the vampire who delved into eldritch lore?”

  “If I had any doubts before, I no longer do.” Jonathan bared his teeth. “It makes sense as well. After being imprisoned in the dagger, he would have started off quite weak.” He looked about furtively. “Eldritch powers can be insidious. If the old texts are to be believed, they can start off as a whisper in your mind before they take control of you. It explains the madness that overtook the baron’s servants and why things spiralled out of control. By the time they realised what was happening, our enemy was already too strong. He wasn’t whispering anymore. He was giving out orders.”

  “Fantastic.” Eric growled. He hated things that attacked his mind. It made it harder to spear them. “Are we going to go crazy?”

  “No. We know about it, which should help us resist it, and it’s most effective through long-term exposure. However, if you do start hearing or seeing things…”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know.” Eric was about to say something else when he sensed movement above them. His eyes widened. How had those things managed to crawl so far across the ceiling without him hearing or s
melling them? It was possible they’d used the pulsing of the walls and the stench to hide their presence… or perhaps they’d come out of the walls themselves. “Look up. We’ve got company.”

  As the others looked up, Eric hurled his spear. The weapon pinned one of the vile, corrupted fledglings to the ceiling, and he called it back in time to smash another out of the air as the hideous creatures leapt at them. The impact of the blow tossed the corrupted fledgling aside and reverberated up his arm. He bared his teeth. These things were tougher than the ones they’d fought so far. “Careful. These ones are tough.”

  “Indeed.” Miles punched one creature in the gut. His fist pulverised its upper body, and he kicked it in the face. The strike shattered its skull and tossed it into the far wall. Eric had to hand it to the butler. He was damn good for an old human. “And there are a lot of them too.”

  Eric laughed in agreement. These ones were further along than the ones they’d faced earlier. There was hardly anything humanoid about them now. Instead, they were all edges, claws, and teeth. His spear darted out again and again, looking for weak spots in their strange, leathery fletch. He heard the whisper of a Word, and one of the creatures went up in flames. Odd. Miles hadn’t used any Words for fire before. How much had he been holding back? In any case, he’d picked a good time to cut loose. They needed to deal with as many of these creatures as they could while they were still fresh. Later, as exhaustion took its toll, the odds of them being overrun would be far greater. As the burning fledgling reeled back, it set others alight, and Miles used the same Word twice more in quick succession. With the flames eating into their flesh and hindering their regeneration, it wasn’t long before Eric and the others gained the upper hand.

  “The smell.” Aria bashed one of the burning creatures over the head with her buckler and then impaled it through the head with her sword. Even still, it took a few moments to die, and she had to kick it away before it could claw her. “It’s awful. I don’t know how the rest of you put up with it, considering your sense of smell is better than mine.”

  Eric snorted. The smell was indeed atrocious. It was like old, rotting leaves mixed with decaying flesh. “I’ve had a keen sense of smell my whole life. Trust me. You get used to it.”

  “At least we’ve thinned their numbers a bit.” Aria looked around, most likely counting how many of the creatures they’d downed. At least a dozen had gone down, and Blue Scales, Miles, and Eileen were finishing off several more. “This definitely reminds me of some of the missions I took for my order.” Her gaze sharpened. “I had to help clear out a hive of giant insects once. The fighting was worst at the start, at least in terms of sheer numbers, but the ones at the end were the toughest.” She shook her head and glanced off to either side. “And the less I think about the ambushes, the better. Barricade the doors to either side. If we take the stairs down and keep pressing forward, the reliquary should be right ahead of us. Once you’ve got the barricades up, we’ll use some Words and some of Eileen’s summons to hold them in place. We should have a decent line of retreat if we have to run for it.”

  Eric nodded and then paused as a strange but familiar feeling rustled through him. Instincts he’d honed since birth tugged at his awareness. “Hold on. There’s something alive nearby.”

  “Alive?” Jonathan gaped. “In here? Are you simply sensing more of those… things, or could some of the servants have survived? If they have managed to stay alive, they could have valuable information.” He blanched. “Although if they’re corrupted… death would be a mercy, I think.”

  “You’d be right.” Eric gathered his magic. “[Seek]!”

  Eric was a werewolf, so he was naturally gifted at finding things. However, one of his main words was [Hunter]. If something was associated with being a hunter, the odds were good that he could use a Word to do it. [Seek] was one of his most useful Words. With enough power behind it, it could find almost anything. “I’ve found something. Follow me.”

  They made their way down one of the corridors with him at the front and Eileen at the back. If worse came to worst, he and Eileen could switch places, with Eileen holding back their attackers while he led them back to a place of safety. Eric was not ashamed to admit that Eileen’s raw strength and durability exceeded his – even after he transformed. His speed, however, was not something she could match indoors.

  It wasn’t long before they came to a section of the corridor that was oddly free of corruption. Eric checked the two closest rooms, and his lips curved into a smile. The size of the rooms did not match the length between them in the corridor. There was a concealed room between them. He used [Seek] again, and a faint glow surrounded a patch of the corridor between the two rooms.

  “There is a door concealed here.” Eric patted the wall. Nothing. “Vampire, get over here.” Jonathan hurried over, and when he touched the wall, several glowing symbols appeared. “Are those wards?” He wasn’t much good at making protective wards, but there had been shamans in his pack who had made wide use of them.

  “I think so,” Jonathan replied. The vampire pursed his lips. “Unless I’m mistaken, they’re designed to stay hidden until touched by a vampire noble of sufficiently pure blood.” He grimaced. “I’m going to guess that the corrupted vampires we’ve run into so far don’t qualify.” He frowned. “I don’t know if I can open this, but whoever is in this room should be able to hear us. Perhaps they can open it from the inside.”

  “Is anyone in there?” Aria shouted as she banged on the wall. “We are adventurers here at the behest of Baron Darkletter.” When no reply came, she repeated herself and flared her magic. If there really were servants hidden away, they should be able to feel Aria’s magic, and only a fool could have confused her magic with the vile power that flowed through the corrupted fledglings.

  There was a commotion from behind the wall. They must have been arguing about whether or not they should open it. Eric couldn’t blame them. If he’d been trapped inside a manor with those corrupted monsters, he’d have been wary too.

  Finally, Jonathan cleared his throat and stepped forward. “I am Lord Jonathan Bloodhaven.” Eric was taken aback by the authority the scholar managed to project. He grinned. The noble might be stronger than he seemed. At the very least, he was no coward. A coward would already have fled. “I am here at the behest of your master. As a vampire noble, I command you to reveal yourselves at once, lest you disgrace the one you serve with your cowardice.”

  Jonathan winced as he finished speaking, but his words had the intended effect. The wall opened to reveal four frightened people crammed into a small room with a meagre quantity of supplies. From the clothes they wore, they were servants, and they recoiled at the sight of Eileen and Blue Scales before relaxing as they caught sight of Miles and Jonathan. Eric bit back a chuckle. Miles was still dressed like a butler, and the way he deferred to Jonathan made it clear that the vampire was his master.

  “Are you Lord Bloodhaven?” one of the servants asked.

  “He is.” Miles stepped forward. Eric wondered why he bothered – the servants weren’t threatening at all – before remembering that servants typically acted as intermediaries between vampire nobles and those beneath them in rank. From what he’d seen of Jonathan, the vampire wouldn’t normally have done this, but he seemed to have realised that playing the part of a proper vampire noble would put the servants at ease. “He has come at your lord’s behest to deal with this problem.”

  “Thank the gods!” the servant cried before he rounded on the others. He was on the younger side for a human. If Eric had to guess, he’d probably been born a servant – as had his parents and their parents before him. “I told you help would come. Our master merely needed time to arrange it.”

  “Come with us,” Aria said. “We need to find out what you know. The more we know, the faster we can deal with this situation.”

  They made their way back to the room with the altar, and Eric listened carefully as the servants told their story. As they spo
ke, Eileen deployed one of her larger summons, a giant spider, to watch over the area. The spider was immensely creepy – as well as incredibly snarky and incredibly venomous – but its senses were extremely keen. Throw in the webs it had spread around, and it was difficult to imagine anything getting past it. As he listened to the servants speak, Eric had to admit that as pretentious as the baron seemed, his servants were certainly loyal. Hopefully, the baron would see fit to reward that loyalty later.

  “It was one of our master’s investigators,” the oldest of the servants said. “He and his fellows were tasked with investigating an artefact for our master. We were merely here to see to their needs and to return this manor to its former glory. Our master has long wished to renovate these premises, and he thought it fitting that his new acquisition have a suitable abode. If needed, our master also felt that this manor might serve as a suitable stronghold should matters go awry elsewhere.”

  Eric acknowledged the point with a small nod. He’d noticed it on their way to the manor. There were plenty of places that were not only difficult to notice but also offered great vantage points. A keen observer could easily keep track of people approaching the manor – or mount an ambush. If he’d been interested in starting a pack of his own, a place like this would have been perfect. “What happened next?”

  The old man swallowed thickly and looked away from the altar. If he’d been in service to the baron for his whole life, this could easily be the first time he’d ever seen a vampire butchered in such a horrible way since there were few who would dare to attack those under the employ of a vampire as powerful and influential as the baron. “The investigator wished to know if the artefact still worked. He said that a working artefact would be more impressive – and far more valuable.”

  “Tell me,” Jonathan said as he drew a symbol in the air with his hand. Sparks followed in its wake, but Eric couldn’t discern its shape, no matter how hard he tried. He scoffed. The less he had to deal with eldritch powers, the better. “Did he use a Sign like this during the ceremony to activate the artefact?”