Nightlord: Orb (54 page)

This is why I generally feel safer at home.  I can’t always bring Bronze and Firebrand with me.

Then I remembered Francine.  What did they do to my dog?

“Hold what you’ve got,” I told Mary, and dashed around the yard, limping slightly while my knee continued to regenerate.  No sign of a doggie corpse anywhere… no, there she was, sitting by the front gate.  I went up to her and wondered why she didn’t come to me.  She obviously wasn’t dead.  She watched me approach, was glad to see me, panted, all the normal stuff, but her butt stayed on the ground.  I ran tendrils all through her, checking for injuries or…

Ah.  Of course.  She had gone to investigate some smell or some sound and a Phrygian had told her to sit, then to stay.  Now she would stay until it wore off.

I tinkered a bit, finding the compulsion.  It was actually pretty subtle.  If it had been a human brain, I might be more certain, but I think this kind of compulsion would be rationalized by the target.  If the rationalization could be broken, the compulsion would end.  As it was, she was obeying a command to the best of her ability.  At least, until someone gave her another one.  Inside her little doggie mind was an echo of the command:
Stay
.

“Francine.  Come!”  And now she had a new command; the old one vanished.  “Good dog!”

I went back to the barn and she followed me, sniffing at everything and growling at the undead.

“We’ve got some live ones,” Mary noted.  “Well, some not-completely-dead ones.  You know what I mean.  What do you want done with them?”

Burn them
, Firebrand suggested.  Mary shrugged and nodded.

“Actually, I want you to question them.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.  But you’re the person to do the asking; I don’t even know the questions.  I’m a little interested in where all these vampires came from, for one thing.  I don’t see Wallace, Teeth, or Knuckles, either—did they refuse to come, or were they killed for talking to us?  That sort of thing.”

“Ah.  Got it.”  I helped her drag the corporeal undead into the barn before they regenerated enough to be mobile.  Most of them were Constantines—Mary put bullets into brains even if I already wounded them, just to keep them from getting up.  Tough bastards.

Not for the first time, I wondered at the seeming differences between my species and theirs.  They didn’t seem too different, overall.  I’d have hated to get into a fight with one back in the days when Sasha was still teaching me swordplay.  Given ninety years in an Ascension Sphere and a lot of mythological blood, would they become as fast and dangerous as I?  Or would such treatment have a greater or lesser effect on them?

I’ll never know the details, but I would like to.

Two Thessaloniki weren’t irrecoverable; I persuaded them to lie still by putting an un-ignited Firebrand in one eye and out the back of the head.  The Phrygians were all ashes, though—Bronze breathes fire and knows my feelings on mind control.  I tried to regret the loss and failed.  I’m a bad person.

Mary nodded at the now-normal Firebrand and asked a question with her eyes.  Firebrand didn’t object, so I handed it over.  She kicked a recovering vampire over on his back and nailed him to the floor of the barn with Firebrand.  The pain restored him to consciousness.  He snarled at her and exploded into a thousand or so bats.

Mary’s exclamation was unladylike; so was mine.  Nobody told me they could do that.  Apparently, nobody told Mary, either.  The other prisoners were still unconscious with head wounds, so they didn’t give us their opinions.

I was more than surprised; I was disgusted.  Why don’t I get to turn into a cloud of bats?  Is it just a case of being the wrong species of vampire?  If so, can I eat other vampires and gain their powers, or is it a case of one kind of vampirism dominating over another?  If I can only have one set, I’d like to see a menu of options!

The bats fluttered madly, screaming in the ultrasonic and screeching in the normal ranges.  They whirled around the inside of the barn and I snatched up Firebrand.  It lit like a flamethrower and we roasted bats on the wing like rats through a rocket engine.  We didn’t get them all, of course.  Maybe half, probably less.  They swarmed out the busted door or up through the hayloft.

I poked at twitching bat-corpses and wondered how many he would need to re-form.  One?  A hundred?  Could he find a blood bank and a bathtub and form a new body from one bat?  Or could he turn into a humanoid form, albeit somewhat smaller than before?  Was mass conserved at all?

More things to find out.  Someday.

Then the bat-corpses dissolved, melting into a black, gel-like substance for several seconds before starting a sublimation process.  Within minutes, they dissipated completely.

I don’t get to do that, either.  Anything I leave behind stays behind.  Why do they get to do that?  It seems so unfair, somehow.

Mary accepted Firebrand again and I started putting out the scattered fires inside the barn.  I also checked for any bats that might still be lurking, spying on the proceedings.  Either they weren’t smart enough for that or way too smart for that.

Mary picked another Constantine out of the pile and tried again, nailing him to the floor.  Firebrand ignited briefly, prompting consciousness and a scream, then went out.

“Hi.  Want to see the Sun?”

His answer was what lawyers call nonresponsive.

“We’re going to talk,” she lilted, cheerily.  “Actually,
you’re
going to talk.  Because the other option isn’t really an option.”

“Burn me,” he grated, almost snarled.  “Get it over with!”

“No, no,” she protested, smiling sweetly.  “You’re going to talk, or I’m going to tell
him
he can go ahead and suck the soul out of you and eat it.”

He glanced at me.  I smiled and touched him with a tendril, checking to see if I could.  Yes, he had a soul in there.  It would be hard to get it out.  It seemed awfully well-attached, possibly a requirement for being in an undead body.  In a living body, there’s some give-and-take with the organic processes.  In a corpse, the soul is less interactive with the flesh and more… stuck?  Mounted?  Embedded, maybe.  With a little work, though, I was sure I could sever the connections and pull it free.  I’m
good
at that sort of thing.

I tugged on it as a test.  He felt me doing it.

Give him credit for courage.  He still refused to talk.  I might drag his soul from his body, but he wasn’t willing to answer questions.  On the other hand, getting your soul eaten is an experience most people can’t really grasp; it’s a threat without a real referent.  Mary decided to persuade him with direct experiences.

I’ve never seen someone actually picked up by the scrotum before.  God willing, I never will again, either.  It’s definitely an attention-grabber.

I didn’t stop her.  There was a day when I would have.  I’m not sure if I’ve become a more practical person or a more calloused one.  However you slice it, I’m pretty sure it’s not a sign of being a
better
person.  Instead, I went about my business, draining power from the Stalls and storing it for later, digging out bullets from vampire brains to move the process of recovery along, that sort of thing.  It helped me to not watch what Mary was doing and to avoid thinking overmuch about how my house was burning to the basement.

Major spell work.  Carpentry.  Insulation.  Wiring.  A little plumbing.  That desk I liked.  My gem-farm setup.  The blast shield I worked so hard and so pointlessly to build into the fireplace.  All my plastic symbols in their neat little boxes.  My warp magnet experiment.  My electromagical transformer.  All gone, just like that.  It wasn’t really my home, I suppose, but it was the place I lived.  I liked it.

It really gave me a new appreciation for burning down other people’s houses.  Maybe I shouldn’t do that so much.  It really is a lot of trouble.  Or, at least, I should only do it to people who actually deserve something so drastic.

Which, of course, implies I don’t think I deserved something so drastic.  No man is a villain in his own eyes, or so I’m told.  How would I know?  If I really am a monster, how do I tell?  I don’t feel like a monster.  Well, yes, I do, but not a monstrous monster, if that makes any sense.  Then again, I don’t feel human, either.  Is it more monstrous to be a human without feeling human, or to be a monster that feels more human than monster?

Yay, philosophy!

Mary wasn’t too pleased about current events, either.  She was upset about something, anyway, and the first of our prisoner interrogations reflected that.  I tried not to pay too much attention; I dislike torture, too.

When Mary was done with her victim, she removed the hands and feet and threw him into a corner.  Bronze moved on her own to look down at him.  She snorted enough fire to convince him silence and total immobility would be an exceptionally good idea.  He played dead quite believably, aside from the wide eyes and the staring at Bronze.

Never make eye contact with a Phrygian or an annoyed, fire-breathing golem horse.  It’s hard to look away.  I think, in Bronze’s case, it’s the molten eyeballs.  That’s a sure sign she’s in exceptionally short temper.

Why is it all the women I like can be incredibly vicious?  Is it part of being female, having that sort of savagery?  Or is it stronger in them?  Or closer to the surface?  Maybe I’m attracted to dangerous women.  Wait, that’s redundant.  Maybe I’m attracted to
particularly
dangerous women, with Mary being an excellent example.

I like her, Boss.

I can tell.  So do I.  Mostly.  I’m not comfortable with her willingness to torture people, though.

I know,
Firebrand said
.  If it helps, I can tell she’s really pissed off, and so are you.

I am?

Yes.

When your psychic sword tells you you’re angry, you should listen.  I didn’t realize I was angry.  No, that’s not true.  I didn’t realize how angry I was.

I did like living in that house
, I admitted.

So did she.  And stop being worried about her interrogation techniques.  It’s not an everyday sort of thing for her; she liked living here with you.  She likes you.

So you’ve said.

You like her, too.  So does Bronze.

Maybe I should let you two decide who I date.

Maybe you should, Boss.  You and Tort would have been much happier if you’d—

Shut up.

Mary quizzed our captives.  I helped by standing behind her and looking grim.  My knee still hurt, so looking grim was easy.  I was a trifle hungry, too, and was looking forward to dinner.

When she finished, we had quite a pile of hands and feet.  Bronze had to back up a little to make room in the corner for prisoners.

“I vote we stake them to the floor and burn the barn,” Mary stated.

“The barn is the only place we have to live,” I pointed out.  She stared at me for a second, then beckoned me to follow her outside.  Quietly, she whispered in my ear so no one else could hear.

“Rather than leave it to the local vampires, the Elders of the three tribes sent a vampire hit squad to this city to help the locals kill you.  That’s why we didn’t see Wallace, Teeth, or Knuckles.  Those Constantines were all out-of-town muscle.

“Once they figured out where you live—I don’t know how, but they did—and they went to the logistical trouble to attack the place right after sunset, when
they
thought we would be getting ourselves together after waking up.  That speaks to extensive planning and determination.

“On top of that,” she continued, “some of bat-boy’s bits made it out.  If he can report in squeaks or simply re-form, I don’t know, but he’s doubtless trying.  It may be a while before they get a second assault together, but the fact they tried in the first place says they will.

“But the big take-away is this:  Now they know our address.”

Oh.

Well.

Now that she mentioned it, it did seem like a bad idea to stay.

“Did you find out why?” I asked, in an equally-quiet whisper.

“No.  They didn’t tell—”  She broke off when we heard the deep, bell-chime
THUD
of a hoof followed by a squeak of terror.  We checked inside; the captives were all crowded much closer together and trying to get deeper into the corner, farther away from Bronze.  The situation was well in hand.

“These didn’t know the reasons,” Mary finished.  “They were simply sent.”  I beckoned her to follow me back into the barn.

“So, am I going to have to summon up the ghosts of the ones we killed to find out?” I asked, aloud.

“I guess so.  None of these know why the Elders sent them.”

“All right.  Bring me any ashes from the ones who burned, please.”  Mary bowed and backed away theatrically before turning to go.  “You lot!” I snapped, facing the prisoners.  “It’s my understanding you were sent here by the Elders of the tribes to kill me.  You weren’t told why, just to go and get it done.  Is this so?”

They agreed it was so.

“Fine.  I appreciate your honesty.  Don’t go anywhere yet; I may have further questions for you.”