The Blood Thief of Whitten Hall (A Magic & Machinery Novel Book 2) (36 page)

“Three,” the Pellite said, unfazed by the bartender’s feeble lies.

“There’s nothing devious happening here,” the bartender said, his stoic visage cracking as his gaze shifted to the seated figures within the passenger cars. “There are no monsters in Whitten Hall.”

“Two.”

“Is it your fellow Inquisitor?” Gregory asked, motioning toward the battered Simon. “Take him. Take whatever you want. We’re not here to cause trouble.”

“One.”

Gregory blanched before gesturing wildly toward those around him. “Shoot him! Someone shoot him!”

Simon closed his eyes as he felt a pang of guilt pierce his chest. He knew what was to come and didn’t want to see it unfold.

“Judgment has been passed,” Creary replied calmly, seemingly oblivious to the weapons being drawn and pointed in his direction.

The snapping of ropes preceded the tarps falling away from the sides of the train’s cargo cars. As they fell to the ground, it revealed Pellites standing within, manning a series of Gatling guns pointed dangerously toward the townsfolk of Whitten Hall.

Gregory dropped to the ground as the Pellites spun the cranks on the sides of the machine guns. The weapons roared to life, spitting fire in a steady stream as bullet after bullet flew from their barrels.

The bullets tore into the startled townsfolk, tearing them apart even as they tried to shift their aim to the new threats. Screams of anguish filled the air as blood splattered onto the dry, thirsty earth. Simon could only imagine the absolute horror of what was occurring around him. In his mind’s eye, the massacre was far worse than what he had witnessed by the werewolves, demons, or vampires thus far.

Shell casings dropped noisily to the steel floor of the train car as the Pellites fed belts of ammunition into the Gatling guns. The barrels turned red from the heat yet the gunners didn’t slow their steady assault, swinging the barrels left to right as they strafed the townsfolk.

The sound of gunfire and of bullets whizzing dangerously close overhead continued for what seemed like an eternity as Simon lay bleeding on the ground. His face was ablaze from the damage dealt and his ears now rang steadily from the battle. Nausea rose unabated from his gut, and he wanted to vomit as he heard bodies fall lifelessly to the ground all around him. Screams of anguish filled the air from those who were merely injured, though Simon doubted their screams would last much longer. Pellites didn’t take prisoners. They came for one purpose only—a mission of cleansing within Whitten Hall. Worst of all, Simon had intentionally brought them here.

As the belts ran dry, the Gatling guns stopped firing one after another. The last few pops of gunfire dwindled to nothing, leaving the air filled with an eerie quiet. Even the screams of pain seemed distant without the harmony of bullets flying overhead.

Simon opened his eyes, staring once again toward the blue sky above him. He sighed heavily, despite the pain it caused in his broken nose and split cheek, before pushing himself up to his elbows. He faced the storefronts as he slowly rose and, to his dismay, the sea of bodies that had once been the inhabitants of Whitten Hall. Simon cringed as the sand grew ever more red with blood, the liquid no longer being absorbed by the thirsty sand and, instead, sitting atop it like a lake.

Glancing over his shoulder, Simon saw the train and the Pellites still mounted in the compartments. Creary stood before the door, as he had been upon his arrival, his face still a steely mask of disinterest. He didn’t seem bothered by how close he had come to death or the slaughter that had been initiated on his command.

To Simon’s surprise, someone leapt from the pile of bodies beside the Inquisitor and ran toward the far end of town. The burly bartender, who had avoided the hail of gunfire in a selfish act of self-preservation, sprinted toward the chancellor’s manor house and the mine beyond.

Simon tried to call out a warning to the Pellites, knowing that a single warning to the vampires would be disastrous to their assault on the mines, but his warning was unnecessary. Inquisitor Creary slid his rifle free from his back. On top of the long rifle was mounted a complex scope of brass and bronze. A series of glass lenses jutted from the side of the scope like jeweler’s lenses, each magnifying the image to a greater degree.

Creary glanced toward the fleeing bartender and bit his inner lip. Simon turned toward Gregory as well, noting with surprise how far the large man had run in such a short time. He was easily outside the range of Simon’s pistol, and the Inquisitor even doubted he would have been able to shoot the man with a rifle either. Creary, however, looked unbothered by the distance. He flipped a pair of lenses into place before pulling the stock of the rifle into his shoulder. For a moment, he didn’t move, just merely aimed at the burly man quickly receding into the distance. With a smooth trigger pull, the rifle fired. Gregory staggered for a second before dropping facedown onto the ground. With a faint smile, Creary lowered the rifle before turning his attention back to the injured Simon.

“Simon!” Mattie yelled as she stepped from the train.

Simon’s previous misery was washed away at the sight of his friend. It was increased exponentially as Luthor climbed down the stairs beside her, each step labored as he used his cane far more for support than merely aesthetics.

The apothecary smiled broadly at the sight of the Inquisitor, though even from the distance, Simon could see the man’s obvious concern at Simon’s appearance.

Simon pushed himself to his knees as he tried to stand, though his ankle, shoulder, and face all ached at the attempt. The two companions rushed to Simon’s side and, bracing him under the arms, helped him to his feet.

“Sir, you look dreadful,” Luthor said.

“It’s good to see you too, Luthor.”

Simon pulled the surprised apothecary into a tight embrace. Slowly, Luthor’s arms slipped around his mentor and they hugged, glad to be in one another’s presence once more.

“You came back for me,” Simon said wearily.

Luthor slipped from Simon’s embrace and smiled at his friend. “Was there ever any doubt?”

As Luthor released the Inquisitor, Simon almost fell to the ground once more. Mattie and Luthor caught him and supported him as best as possible.

“We need to get you some help,” Mattie replied, quickly breaking the awkwardness of the situation. “Come, Simon, let’s get you to the train where you can sit and rest.”

As they walked away from the bloodshed, the gunners climbed down from the train and drew pistols before moving amongst the dying and dead townsfolk. Simon kept his head stoically forward, despite the lurch he felt as the first gunshot rang out behind him, forever silencing one person’s pleading cry of anguish.

They helped Simon toward the open doors of the cargo cars, where he sat heavily on the steel edge of the train. Though he had been tired and in pain before, the weight of his ordeal seemed to settle on his shoulder even heavier as the stress of his very survival lifted. His chin lowered to his chest, and he merely stared at the ground below. Mattie and Luthor glanced at one another nervously, though they granted Simon the peace and quiet he so clearly desired.

Inquisitor Creary walked toward Simon as the rest of the Pellites, a veritable army of men, dismounted from the passenger cars. They wielded a myriad of weapons as though armed for war.

“It’s good to see you still alive, Inquisitor Whitlock,” the bald Pellite said.

Simon glanced up at the man with tired eyes, but he didn’t offer a response.

Creary merely nodded, as though expecting the response. “You did the right thing in calling us, though admittedly, I was surprised to receive your letter.”

Simon glanced toward the bodies sitting under the blazing sun. “I’m not entirely convinced that I did do the right thing.”

“Regardless, what’s done is done. Now we have a mission to complete.”

“Better the devil you know, right Creary?” Simon asked.

Creary sneered at the insult, one that was especially painful to a Pellite, who fought against magic and demons in all their forms. “Where are the vampires, Simon?”

Simon glanced at the man, staring at him intently for a long moment before gesturing toward the road out of town. “You’ll find a mine only a few miles down that road. The vampires have made their home within.”

Inquisitor Creary smiled, though it lacked the charisma it did with most men. “We have a physician with us who will tend to your wounds. Whether you accept it or not, you’ve done a great service to your kingdom and the crown.”

Simon looked away from the Pellite and stared, instead, at the dead men strewn across the ground. He felt disgusted with himself, far more than he was with Creary.

“We’re not your enemy, Simon,” Creary said as he leaned forward “They are. Not just the vampires but the townsfolk who would rather side with abominations like vampires than the crown. You may not always agree with the Order’s methods, and your facial expression tells me all that your mouth refuses to say, but we yearn for the same thing—peace and tranquility within the kingdom.”

When Simon didn’t reply, Creary leaned back and glanced over his shoulder to where his fellow Pellites were lighting torches.

“You asked us to be here, and it was your mission to begin with. What will you have us do about the vampires?”

“What of those inside?” the Pellite asked.

Simon looked at the Pellites surrounding him, with their weapons drawn and torches held aloft despite the brightness of the midday sun. They came to serve justice against the abominations within the mine, but Simon didn’t see justiciars standing before him.

They were a lynch mob. In another time not so long past, nooses would have replaced their swords.

Simon glanced morosely down the road, toward the entrance to the mine. He had condemned the townsfolk to death. Though there was only one response to Creary’s question, he hesitated anyway. As the memories of his abuse at the hands of his captives, the saddened expression hardened into a steely resolve.

“They made their choice and now must bear its burden,” he replied. “Kill them all.”

The physician gingerly touched Simon’s nose. The Inquisitor winced, feeling the cracked cartilage as the doctor probed the flattened bridge.

“Forgive me, but this will hurt,” the older physician said. “I have to reset the broken nose or it will heal poorly.”

Simon glanced pleadingly toward Luthor. The apothecary held up a flask in his hand with a sad smile.

“What’s in it?” Simon asked, his voice sounding nasally to his ears.

“Do you really want to know?” Luthor asked. He shook the flask, letting the liquid within slosh against the metal container.

Simon shook his head and took the flask. “Not in the least.”

The liquid burned like fire as it poured down his throat. It felt thick, like it was coating his esophagus as it passed. The fire in his belly felt far worse than even his sprained ankle, but it quickly converted to general warmth that spread through his limbs.

Simon coughed softly before taking a second draw. “Okay, doctor, I believe I’m ready now.”

The physician worked quickly, with a practiced stroke. His thumbs pressed toward one another on either side of his nose, and everyone heard an audible crack. Simon jerked involuntarily, though he realized afterward that there was little pain. In retrospect, he didn’t even remember his shoulder or cheek aching as badly either.

The physician smiled a crooked but wizened smile. He reached up and wiped away a bit of sweat from the gray hair above his ears. “We still need to suture your cheek and wrap your ankle, sir, before I can release you.”

“Nothing for the shoulder?” Mattie asked as she touched the scabbed wound.

Simon flinched and pulled away, glancing incredulously toward the redhead.

“The wound is already healing and to suture it, I would have to completely reopen the injury. It will leave a remarkable scar if left untended, of that you can be certain.”

Simon shook his head. “Leave it. This injury and I have had our words and have now come to a mutually beneficial understanding.”

Luthor glanced at his mentor with a raised eyebrow, but Simon offered no explanation.

The doctor withdrew a curved needle and some thread and set to work closing the open gash underneath Simon’s eye. Simon averted his gaze, glancing instead toward the apothecary.

“I’m glad to see you and Miss Hawke escaped the vampires.”

“Please don’t talk while I’m working, sir,” the physician ordered.

Luthor sat down beside his mentor. “It was a tiresome chase for the first night, certainly, sir, but they quickly lost interest. It seems they had a much more bothersome adversary about which to worry a bit closer to home.”

Simon started to smile but quickly stopped, lest he upset the physician once more.

“We’re just glad to see you alive and well, Simon,” Mattie said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “We feared the whole trip that we would find you captured or worse.”

Simon waited patiently for the doctor to finish his work and tie off the last stitch before speaking again. As he opened his mouth, he could feel the stiffness in his cheek.

“Despite their intimate knowledge of these woods, there weren’t many of their kind to search. I found a good place in which to hide and remained there for as long as I dared.”

He thought of his misadventures with Tom Wriggleton and the man’s eventual assassination, but he decided against sharing those more bothersome details with his friends.

“Help me up, if you please,” he said, extending his arms toward Luthor and Mattie.

“I haven’t yet wrapped your sprained ankle,” the physician protested.

Simon waved the man away so he could stand. “My ankle has survived far worse than a walk down a dirt road. I’m assuming you will still be here upon our return?”

The physician nodded. “Of course, sir.”

“Then my ankle will, everything willing, still be attached to my body upon my return. You may treat it then.”

Mattie and Luthor took him under the arms and helped him to his feet. Simon felt rejuvenated, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the rescue or the draught that Luthor had him drink.

“I’m feeling better,” the Inquisitor offered. “I think I would like to walk on my own, if it’s all the same.”

They withdrew their hands, and Simon took a step forward before his leg began to buckle. Mattie hurried to his side and held him up with her exceptional strength.

“Perhaps I misjudged my abilities.”

Luthor stepped beside him and offered his cane. “I can move well enough on my own right now, sir. Please, take it.”

Simon nodded and took the cane, leaning heavily on it as he stepped into the street. Though he longed to return to the mines and see the Pellite’s progress in routing the vampire horde, he instead walked through the collection of bodies littering the street. He kept his eyes downcast to watch where he stepped, but he tried his best not to personify the corpses around him. There was a familiarity to most of their faces, either having been seen during their first entrance into the town or subsequently during Simon’s guerrilla war, but the Inquisitor didn’t want to recognize those around him. They were the enemy, he reminded himself, and they deserved their punishment.

Reaching a small clearing in the middle of the bodies, Simon bent forward and picked up his top hat from the ground. Resting the cane against his hip, he used his hands to dust it off, though the hat still retained more of a brown color than its usual stark black. Unperturbed, Simon placed it canted upon his head.

He quickly exited the center of the bullet-ridden corpses and rejoined his friends. Wordlessly, they turned as one and made their way out of town.

Simon offered Gregory little more than a second glance as they passed his body near the tavern. A blossom of blood stained the back of his shirt from Creary’s single shot. Simon admired the man’s accuracy once more before they moved along.

Their pace was painfully slow, with Luthor’s broken gait from his as-of-yet unhealed hip and Simon’s twisted ankle. Mattie showed eternal patience walking slowly beside the two, though they both knew she longed only to run freely through the woods in her wolf form.

“You’ve both cleaned up nicely,” Simon remarked, hoping to break the chilling spell that had settled over them, as though none of their group could find the words to explain their latest ordeal.

“Luthor genuinely considered not bathing before our return, just so you wouldn’t feel so put out,” Mattie replied.

Simon smirked, acutely aware of his own stench as compared to his clean companions. “I appreciate the thought, Luthor.”

“I considered it, sir.”

“Yet in the end, you did bathe.”

Luthor shrugged. “If your current fragrance is any indication of how we smelled upon our return, then you should thank God that we did.”

“Are you insinuating I smell?” Simon asked in mock indignation.

“Like garbage left to rot in the sun,” Luthor replied. “If you don’t believe me, you should see Mattie’s face every time you turn away from her. I can only imagine that to her astute senses, you smell like a veritable sewer.”

Simon paused for a second, glancing at both his companions before starting once more at his slow gait. “I don’t think I like either of you anymore.”

Luthor shrugged even as Mattie laughed. The apothecary withdrew a large muffin from his doctor’s bag as they walked, holding it in the palm of his hand. “That’s unfortunate, sir, because I happened to have taken a muffin from the train. It’s blueberry, I believe, your favorite. I figured you might have grown—”

Simon didn’t let Luthor finish before taking it from his hand and stuffing a good portion of the muffin into his mouth.

“I think he was hungry,” Mattie said.

“The only way you could have made me happier is if this muffin had been made out of steak instead,” Simon replied through a mouthful of moist crumbs.

All three paused as they passed the chancellor’s manor. The house was abuzz with activity as the Pellites ransacked the home. Men in suits crawled amongst the repaired wagons, tossing aside bags of food and other supplies as they searched the grounds.

Simon frowned, feeling violated as these latecomers completed a mission he began nearly a week before. He should have felt closure at the event but instead, he felt disappointment.

Turning away, he led them onward toward the mine.

The sun was still high in the sky when the trio reached the edge of the quarry. They paused at the lip before descending the winding perimeter road that led to the mine floor. Far below them, the Pellites were already hard at work.

From the mouth of the mine, a group of suited men emerged. They held the ends of taut ropes in their hands and strained to pull something from the shadowed entrance. From the distance, it was hard to discern details, but Simon needed none. His imagination filled in the details that his eyes failed to see.

The Pellites pulled as a group, making headway against the vampire within. The creature hissed and yelled, pulling with superhuman strength against the ropes tied around its arms and neck. Its booted feet dug into the ground, seeking purchase in the rocky floor of the cavern, but it lost ground with each stern pull on the far end of the ropes.

It looked over its shoulder, its eyes widening in fear as the line of embarkation grew closer. The sunlight was a sheet, dangling across the mouth of the mine. As it was dragged closer to the first beams of brilliant light, it could feel its skin heating in response.

From their perch on the top of the quarry, Simon watched as the Pellites pulled again and the vampire came tumbling from the protective gloom of the mine. It fell to the ground, its head downturned as sunlight poured onto its back. Smoke rose from its body as it lifted an arm protectively, trying to block the glaring sun. Fissures appeared on its skin, and it screamed in horror as its body ignited from within before tumbling to ash. Its mound of gray ash joined a dozen others on the stones below.

Simon gestured toward the trail, and the trio made their way to the cavern floor. As they reached the edge of the poisoned water pool, Inquisitor Creary met them.

“I didn’t expect you to be here, Inquisitor Whitlock,” Creary said.

“I had to see this done,” Simon replied, watching even as they pulled another vampire into the sun. “I had to make sure it was finished.”

“It will be soon enough.”

Luthor pointed toward the mine’s mouth. “Did you meet much resistance?”

Creary shrugged. “No more than we expected. We caught the bastards while they were sleeping in their bunks.”

“How fared your men?” Simon asked.

“We lost some but, again, no more than we expected.”

Simon frowned at the man’s blasé response. To the Order of Kinder Pel, the ends always justified the means. He doubted Creary even acknowledged the loss of life as anything more than necessary collateral damage.

They walked toward the mine, Creary keeping pace as they did. From out of the mine, a larger group of Pellites emerged. They strained against the ropes as a vampire clearly pulled with incredible might against them. One of the group broke away and hurried to Inquisitor Creary’s side.

“We’ve found their leader, sir,” the Pellite said. “He’s putting up quite a fight, but we’ll have him finished soon enough.”

“You have the chancellor?” Simon asked.

The Pellite nodded as he turned his attention toward Simon. “He fought like a fiend, but we were finally able to bind him.”

Simon turned toward Creary. “Forgive me, but I’d like to watch this.”

He, Luthor, and Mattie left the Pellites where they were and walked toward the mine’s entrance. They walked past the Pellites tugging firmly on the taut rope until they were standing beside the wooden supports at the entryway.

“Sir, would you like to watch this alone?” Luthor asked.

Simon set his jaw, eager to see this completed. “No, please stay. I want us all to witness this moment.”

The Pellites pulled again, and the chancellor was dragged into the sunlight. He howled in rage, his anger overwhelming even the pain he must have been feeling. The once manicured Martellus Whitten looked animalistic as he stood defiantly in the sunlight. He tossed his head from side to side and strained savagely against the ropes holding him, oblivious to the noose tightening around his neck.