by Stead, Nick
Allhallowtide had come again. Lady Sarah placed the candle she’d stolen inside her grotesque lantern, and set the hollowed out vegetable on top of the stranger’s headstone.
No longer sinister guardians against the malevolent beings prowling the twilight realm, her lanterns now joined her in her annual ritual for remembering the people she had loved and lost to mortality. But more than that, they were tokens of the feelings her sire had awoken in her on the night of her turning, fleeting though that first meeting had been. And though her heart ached with the knowledge he’d left her to her fate, it continued to yearn for the handsome stranger who’d taken her humanity. Lady Sarah refused to believe she would never see him again. Their fates had become intertwined the moment he’d let his blood enter her body, and their paths were surely destined to cross as they walked their eternal nights.
She stood there amongst the graves, a solitary figure in silent vigil, like an unholy custodian of the dead. It was a far cry from the nights spent in the company of her father’s court as they feasted and enjoyed their festivities in honour of the departed. There was so much of the human world that had already begun to lose all meaning, and even the magic this time of year had once held had now begun to wane.
Lady Sarah raised her eyes to the heavens, wondering if any of the mortals she’d called family had made their way to the afterlife and found freedom among the stars. Her hopes of a ghostly reunion with any of them were all but gone. Over two hundred years had passed with not a single visit from a spirit she’d once known, so why should this night be any different? Yet she continued to make her lanterns anyway. It was the one thing that made her feel connected to the woman she used to be, and helped keep her memories of her birthplace and blood relatives strong.
Her lantern that year felt especially significant. Never had she been forced so far from her ancestral home, or so deep into foreign territories. Discovering some of these new lands and their cultures had been exciting, and she’d particularly enjoyed her stay in France. Yet the further north she went, the harsher the countries seemed to be. She could feel her feeble hold on civilisation slipping away as her latest brush with the Demon Slayers forced her deeper into rural communities, and it scared her. It might be the final sacrifice her vampirism demanded, but it was not one she was ready to make. Perhaps she never would be.
Lady Sarah felt a tear sliding down her cheek. She was not the first undead to wallow in self-pity, nor would she be the last.
“No,” she said, angry with herself. She was better than this. She was a queen, a ruler of men and a pillar of strength without which the kingdom would fall. But was a queen in exile still a queen? It didn’t matter. Her parents had not raised her to be weak. She had to stay strong if she wished to endure, or relinquish her claim to eternity and fall into a state of true death. There was no room for anything in between.
Composing herself, Lady Sarah lifted her turnip lantern and took her leave of the graveyard, and that unique peace which existed only in these places where the dead lay at rest. The streets of the living were almost as quiet, the time of Allhallowtide apparently unmarked by these people. No church bells rang for the dead, nor did she pass any children out souling. She alone carried her carved lantern as she wandered between the houses, and she held it with all the tenderness of a mother cradling her baby.
There were no castles or manor houses here. She eyed the small dwellings with distaste, reluctant to build a new life in a culture which felt so foreign to everything she’d known up until then. But what other choice did she have? This was the closest she’d come to civilisation all night. The farms she’d passed through were spread out, not clustered into the villages she was used to. Much of the country seemed to be untamed wilderness, and if there were any large cities where the aristocracy must surely dwell, she had yet to find them. It was either settle in this town or continue wandering the wilderness and risk having to spend the day in a cave like an animal, or worse, beneath the soil like one of the truly dead. Neither of those options were particularly appealing.
A scream brought the town to life. Doors opened and people poured out, streaming round Lady Sarah like water round a stone. The smell of blood carried to her on the wind but her hunger remained quiet, her thirst for blood already satiated. Curiosity was the driving force that night.
She stalked through the throng, the crowd parting for her without argument. She vaguely wondered how much of that was in response to some primal sense of the predator in their midst, and how much was down to the commanding presence of her royal blood. Either way, it allowed her to pass through without any trouble.
A corpse lay in the centre of the crowd. Two overflowing wells in its neck marked it as a vampire kill, a trickle of red dripping onto the cobbles beneath. Lady Sarah’s curiosity rose higher still. Other than Vince, she’d barely had any dealings with her own kind. There was still much she did not know about the history of her race and the Slayers, as well as other members of the undead. This new vampire might be able to change all that. Maybe, if the vampire was old enough, they might even be able to tell her more about the one who turned her all those years ago.
One of the humans said something in their own tongue, rough and foreign to her ears. Another man answered the first, then one of the women joined in. Lady Sarah looked up and saw they were pointing at her, and she didn’t need to understand the words to catch their meaning. Too late, she realised how she must look to them. A stranger, an outsider, carrying a turnip lantern with a sinister face carved into it. Little wonder they were accusing her of murder.
Two of the men made the mistake of trying to seize her arms. She reacted on instinct, breaking free of their grip with such force that one man went stumbling back into the people around him and the other was sent sprawling on the cobbles beside the corpse. It looked like she was going to have to take her chances in the wilderness after all.
She was about to shift into a bat when another man stepped out from the crowd on the opposite side of the square. He brandished a cross and yelled at her with such passion that she was left in little doubt as to which faction he’d sworn his allegiance to. But if the Slayers’ influence had begun to spread to these smaller communities, the threat was becoming more serious than she had realised. Was the time to leave the human world already at hand?
She could still have taken to the skies if it hadn’t been for the second Slayer standing just beside her. The splash of holy water hit her cheek in a rush of burning pain, sinking into her skin like water into snow and turning her face into gory slush sliding down her skull. She screamed and dropped her lantern. Her hands clutched her ruined face, feeling the water continue to eat its way down to the bone as though it were an acid. It was only by chance it had missed her eyes, but the agonising sensation of it melting her flesh was enough to distract her from everything else. When she fought her way back through the pain, the time to shift had passed. The Slayer closest to her had a dagger in his hand, its blade stabbing through the air in a downwards arc meant for her head.
Lady Sarah recovered in time to grab hold of the man’s arm. A sharp twist, and the bone snapped with a loud crack. The Slayer screamed and fell back, cradling the broken limb with his good arm.
People were beginning to panic around them, the crowd becoming a stampeding herd of terrified prey. More Slayers revealed themselves. Some were armed with crossbows, others with swords and more daggers. Most worrying was the man with the cross. He started to chant an incantation, though what kind of spell it was for she could only guess.
The Slayers armed with blades charged towards her, and the enemies with crossbows squeezed their triggers. Several bolts shot through the air, but she was able to dodge most of them. Only two found their mark in her flesh, one burrowing its way into her shoulder and the other piercing her arm.
The pain was nothing compared to the holy water. She bared her fangs in a cat-like hiss and turned to deal with the first of the sword-wielding Slayers swinging his blade towards her
neck.
Dodging their blades was even easier than dodging the crossbow bolts. The sword sailed harmlessly through the air as she sidestepped and slashed a hand across the man’s throat. Four deep trenches opened up, blood gushing from them as he fell to his knees, his hand doing nothing to stem the tide. He would not be getting back up, at least not as one of the living. Lady Sarah turned away to face more of her adversaries.
She dispatched the next Slayer in a similar fashion. More crossbow bolts flew towards her and another swordsman slashed at her head, while a swordswoman stabbed at her chest. Lady Sarah just had chance to realise she couldn’t avoid all their weapons this time, and without quite knowing why, she held a hand out in front of her.
To her amazement, the bolts stopped mid-flight and clattered to the ground, as if they’d hit an invisible wall. But she had little time to dwell on it. The swordsman and woman were still a threat.
Lady Sarah dodged the man’s attack and dragged him into the path of the woman’s blade. The sword slid inside his chest like the two had been made to fit each other. She released him and stepped into the woman’s neck, sinking her fangs deep into the skin and ripping away a chunk of flesh in one graceful movement. Blood spurted as both swordsman and woman joined the other fallen on the cobbled street.
Lady Sarah licked the blood from her lips and went to take down another of her attackers, but something was wrong now. Her enemies had successfully kept her distracted while the man with the cross intoned his incantation and the spell took effect, binding her arms to her side with its mystical force. She screamed in frustration as she was forced to her knees, struggling against the occult power with everything she had. But no amount of physical strength was going to break it.
The crossbowmen loosed another volley of bolts. She tried concentrating on stopping them a second time but the spell seemed to be restraining her telekinetic power as well. It felt like a cruel twist of fate for her to discover this new ability, only to be denied the use of it to save her life.
Sharpened metal tips shot towards her heart and head, and she’d gleaned enough over the last two centuries to know what was about to happen. But there was nothing she could do. Death was coming and she was powerless to stop it.
Just as the bolts were about to pierce her flesh, they veered off course, some finding a new mark in the surrounding humans, some hitting the walls of the buildings round the edge of the square and clattering to the ground. Fear and confusion rippled through the Slayers. She heard their hearts pumping faster, singing their songs to the predators who might set them free. But she was as surprised by this turn of events as they were.
The Slayers’ fear grew as one man’s neck twisted and snapped, killing him instantly. Another had all his limbs broken. He fell screaming and lay helpless among the dead. A third victim had her skull crushed in an explosion of bone fragments and brains. Some of the humans started to flee at that.
Those who had the courage to stay and fight turned to face the source of this greater power. Lady Sarah also fixed her eyes on the street across from her, and there he was. One of the greatest warriors in all of history, and among the most powerful of vampires ever to walk the Earth. He was exactly as she remembered him the last time he’d appeared to her. The handsome stranger, he who was the first to take a hold of her heart. He had returned at last.
She watched in awe as he walked towards her with the utter surety of an apex predator, completely unconcerned by the lesser beings around him. The Slayers continued to fall one by one. The crossbowmen he killed with that same telekinetic power he’d used on the first three. Those who dared charge him were felled by his blade, their heads rolling as he parted them from their shoulders. One woman he cleaved in two, splitting her body down the middle from skull to abdomen in an impressive display of brute strength. She collapsed, her corpse like a valley of gore as the blood poured and pooled beneath her.
Lady Sarah locked eyes with her sire, noting how they were a brilliant green which seemed to pierce right through to her very soul. Again she felt like there was something of the wolf he wore in them, a bestial ferocity to him as he struck down his foes. Most men liked to pretend they had lost that savagery during the process of becoming civilised, but this man, this vampire, was not trying to pretend to be something he was not. He made no effort to hide that primal side to him, nor did she think he would feel any shame in it after the battle was won. His bloodlust was a part of him and he’d embraced it. She admired that. Of all the vampires who could have made her, she was proud to have been chosen by him.
The other vampire broke eye contact first, turning his gaze on the Slayer he’d left till last; the one who’d bound Lady Sarah with his magic. His chanting had come to a stop and she realised she could move again. Standing, she pulled the crossbow bolts from her arm and shoulder, watching as the man raised his cross towards this new enemy and began a different chant. She wondered if the fool actually believed that would save him. If he did, he was sorely mistaken.
The man began to choke on his words. Blood spilled from his mouth and his tongue slithered from its cave, a slimy pink slug falling to the cobbles where it curled and died. His hand holding the cross was the next body part to go. The male vampire’s blade sliced clean through the flesh and bone, the appendage landing a little way from the tongue. Its grip slackened the moment the nerves were severed and the cross took a different path to the ground. Blood tainted its purity when it hit the cobbles, turning the metal as dull and lifeless as the eyes of the corpses surrounding it.
Wordless screams sounded from the mutilated spellcaster. Then the feral vampire was grabbing his prey by the hair and the screams turned to pleas. The vampire took no notice, jerking the man’s head to one side and exposing his neck.
“Drink,” the feral vampire said.
Lady Sarah did not need to be told twice. Her body needed the blood to heal her wounds, and she guzzled every last drop left in his veins. The burning agony in her face came to a blissful end, and the two holes left by the bolts closed up as though they had never been. Not even a faint scar remained to mark the wounds.
She was too lost in the ecstasy of the blood to pay any attention to the other vampire while she was feeding, but when she pulled away it was to find he had remained close, with only their victim between them. He was gazing at her with the same lust she felt for him. She half expected him to toss the man’s corpse aside and grab her in a passionate embrace, but he didn’t. It left her with a strange mixture of disappointment and relief.
“Thank you,” she said, taking a step back. “But I did not need saving. I could have defeated them alone.”
Amusement crept across those feral features. “Of course.”
She frowned, her eyes flashing. “After two hundred years, I thought you had forgotten about me. Your help would have been appreciated in my first nights as a vampire, however.”
“I could never forget you,” he answered, releasing his hold on the corpse. The Slayer’s body fell to the cobbles. Ironically, it landed so that the mouth was just beside its severed tongue, as if the appendage were about to crawl back inside.
She looked away from those striking green orbs, her eyes fixing on what was left of her lantern. It had been trampled during the fight, the face she’d carved reduced to shattered fragments, much like the skull of the woman whose head had exploded.
“For God’s sake!”
Her Christian beliefs had long since faded, but still the curse came so easily to her lips. Two hundred years with not the smallest hint of God’s presence. There might be a Heaven, but it didn’t seem to be anything like she’d been taught to believe in.
The vampire followed her gaze. “Why do you cling to your human ways?”
“Is there anything else for us, besides blood? You turned me into a monster and then you abandoned me to my fate.”
“I gave you a gift and you proved yourself worthy of it. The strong adapt and survive, and the weak die. That is the way of things, the one
constant in a world which is ever changing.”
“Why did you turn me?”
“You know why,” he said, his voice thick with lust. “Such beauty deserves to be timeless.”
“I see. And do you turn every woman you are attracted to?”
“Does the thought of that make you jealous?”
“Of course not,” she lied. “I do not even know your name, if you intend to stay long enough to give me it this time.”
He gave another amused grin, which only made her more annoyed at him. “I am the one they call Wolf’s Bane, first of the Elders and warlord of our race. But you may call me Ulfarr.”
First of the Elders, what did that mean?
His gaze roamed down her body, and back up again. But there was respect in his eyes now. “You were also a great leader when first we met.”
“I am still a queen. You may call me Lady Sarah.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Lady?”
“It is my title, by birthright.”
“It is another piece of your humanity you are holding on to.”
“Perhaps. Do you really expect me to believe you have not done the same?”
A half smile flitted across his lips. “I am from a time before kings and queens. I was born in an age where mankind was still young and the world was a simpler place.”
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. “Yet you carry the titles of Elder and Wolf’s Bane.”
“Titles earned in my undeath.”
“And who bestowed them upon you? Are we a society I have been excluded from, because you did not care to stay and teach me of all your blood contained, all it would unlock when you chose to share it with me?”
“Perhaps if you had left the human world already you might have discovered such things for yourself. We undead are solitary creatures for the most part, though there are times when we are forced to unite. Every group needs a leader and thus I was named Elder.”
“Are we at war, then?”
He chuckled. “You were just attacked by human hunters working as a group and you have to ask if this is a war? There have always been those who have hunted us but never as a group. Not until these Demon Slayers formed. They are a growing threat, though not the one that most concerns me. But if you must know, the reason I turned you, aside from your beauty, was to help replenish our ranks.”