The Dead of Sanguine Night (5 page)

“You better save your family before it’s too late!” Lauren tossed her hands into the air and spun around, as if dancing to the sound of the screams.

“Goat, help me!” her father yelled.

Margaret glanced toward the kitchen. If this
wasn’t
an illusion, then she was dooming them. But if it was, why couldn’t she hear them through the broadcaster? Was it really necromancy interfering with their communications…or was it that Lauren truly had them within the depths of the house?

There was no time to consider options. Ghouls were lumbering down the stairs and into the living room.

Margaret shoved past Lauren and toward the dark room where she could hear the screams closer. It was a kitchen. A chandelier barely clung to the ceiling, looking like it might collapse at any moment. The table was covered with filmy glasses and plates piled high with molding bread. To her right, the counter was covered with mouse shit, filth, and broken dishes, and something that looked a lot like dried blood.

There was only one other way out of the kitchen and that was on the far wall. A darkened hallway with green, floral wallpaper and a mauve colored, threadbare rug led deeper into the house. At the other end of the hallway, an oil lamp burned behind a butterfly shade. The plaintive fire did little to illuminate the end of the hall, but Margaret could make out doorways along the hall that led into partially lit rooms, casting halos of light into the hallway.

Ghoulish hands reached for her, and Margaret fled down the hallway, her sword clasped in hand, though it might as well have been forgotten in her panic.

The first room she stumbled into was small and pink, or it might have been pink at one time. Layers of wallpaper shown through from beneath scratches and deep grooves in the walls. To the left sat a bare bed, more holes in the mattress than not. A cracked window, filmed with age and dirt, stood against the opposite wall…and on that wall was her brother.

Lincoln’s lax body had been hung from the wall with chains. A chain around his neck was all that was holding him in place. His face was a pale blue, his hands nearly gray. His glassy eyes stared down at the floor. Three ghouls stood before him, their blackened, leathery hands tearing into his flesh, pulling guts from his cavity and to their waiting mouths where they chomped on his intestines. A foul stench filled the air, the mingling of intestinal gas and a stronger, ranker smell of urine and feces.

“Oh no,” Lauren said behind her. In her voice, she sounded truly sorry. “You’re too late to save your brother. What will your father think? He’s put so much hope in him, and you let him down.” Lauren clucked a few times. “All of the trust and love he gave you, and you’ve squandered it.”

Margaret turned, lashed out at the necromancer with the sword, but it passed through her. Deeper in the house, she heard the necromancer laugh.

Margaret turned back to her brother, her mind muffled. She didn’t want to believe that this was real, that this was her brother, but the proof was before her. Lincoln was dead. She didn’t realize that she had cut down the ghouls until she was standing amidst their blackened bodies, reaching up for the chains that held Lincoln to the wall. Moments before she could loosen her brother, a terrible scream echoed out of the room across the hall.

There was no hope for her brother now, but there may be some hope for whoever was in the next room. Margaret dashed across the hall and into a room only slightly larger than the one her brother’s body occupied.

There was Adelaide, writhing on a bare mattress with ghouls bent over her. Their bodies blackened as if they were victims of a terrible fire. Their eyes read with bloodshot, pink muscles exposed through the cracks of their flesh.

Margaret charged into the room, severing the head from the ghoul nearest the door, and pushed the others away from her friend with a warning swipe.

“It’s too late!” the necromancer shrieked with glee as the ghouls merged with the shadows of the farthest corner of the room.

Lauren stood in the doorway, bent at the waist, cackling as if this was the greatest comedy she’d ever seen. “Hunters! Who thought they could be such fun? Looks like I’ve been targeting the wrong people all this time.”

Margaret charged at her and slammed her sword through Lauren’s center. Even if it didn’t do a thing, it made Margaret feel better. Time and again she jammed the sword home, but Lauren only laughed in her face. Once more the necromancer pulled herself off the blade and fled down the hallway.

“Dead,” she said, pointing into the next room. “Oh, and Nancy’s made a huge mess!” Lauren said, pointing into the next. Margaret didn’t want to turn back to the room. She could hear the ghouls feasting on Adelaide now that Margaret wasn’t near to protect her friend. The librarian’s screams fell silent.

Lauren stood at the end of the hall before the lamp. Her eyes flared with ghostly blue power.

“Go ahead, you can check if you want.”

But there were no more screams, and Margaret didn’t
want
to check the other rooms and see
why
the screams had stopped.

What she
did
want was at the end of the hall. Lauren. To kill the necromancer once and for all. There was a thought in her mind, something that she should be remembering from her studies earlier in the day. The thought tried to flit away, but Margaret reached for it, chasing it through her mind. Right when she was about to uncover what it was, she was struck with a great force. Margaret stumbled back against the doorframe, the memory, the key to defeating the necromancer retreated to the fare recesses of her mind an enigma once more. She shook her head and through the broadcaster the sound of banging pots shook her brain.

:Margaret Sara Vantasyl, you listen to me now!: Nancy yelled. :It’s all an illusion. She’s woven a spell over you.:

:Did you get through to her?: Lincoln asked.

:Yes, I believe so.: Nancy said.

:Goat, if you can hear us, please let us know,: Samuel said. :If you can hear us, say the word hear…somehow so she doesn’t know you can hear us.:

“I can’t hear the screams any longer,” Margaret said.

:We got her,: Adelaide said. :Hold tight Maggie, we are nearly there. Remember what we read—:

“Of course you can’t,” Lauren said. “They’re dead!”

:What we read!: Adelaide said. :She’s a lich. There’s something on her, about her, something that’s housing her soul. You have to destroy that. Anything that looks different about her, destroy it!:

Margaret sagged to the floor, tears slipping down her face. They were tears of joy, glad that her clan was safe, glad that they hadn’t died in that house. Lauren didn’t know that though, and she swayed closer to Margaret, laughing.

“Aww, poor thing. You let them all die!”

Margaret let the necromancer talk, let her prattle on thinking that she’d defeated her once and for all. She waited until the death mancer was closer, waited until she could see Lauren’s black slippers under her gaze before she acted. When she struck, it was swift and true. Behind her strike, Margaret put all of her fear of losing those that were closest to her, those who loved her unconditionally and those she loved the same. The strike was hard, straight through the only thing she’d noticed of difference about the necromancer, her ghostly blue eyes.

The sword sliced through the top of Lauren’s head. When her blade connected with the eyes, they shattered like glass. Fine dust slashed into the air, exploding outwards from her eyes. The top of her head thumped to the floor and tumbled away.

The dust didn’t settle on the floor, instead it hung on the air. A blue light shimmered from the dust of her eyes, and drifted toward Margaret. It drifted through her, and she felt a warmth. She knew without knowing precisely how she knew, that this wasn’t another attack. This was something else. The blue light seemed to kindle something in her. Deep within, she felt a blossoming of power, like a lotus flower opening up in the deep recesses of her mind.

Margaret sighed and slumped against the doorway. She only had a moment’s reprieve before she heard a racket in the living room. Through the buzz of the broadcaster, she heard the other hunters engaging the ghouls. Before long, the last of the undead were slain and Samuel thumped through the house, searching for Margaret.

He found her in the doorway. Samuel hugged her, and kissed her softly on the forehead.

“Let’s get you home,” Samuel said.

“Agreed, she’s done an amazing job,” Adelaide said, finding them in the hallway.

Through the broadcaster she could hear Lincoln speaking with the other hunter in the living room.

“Who was the Pralin that came with you?” Margaret asked Samuel.

“Vincent Pralin. He’s a scout,” Samuel said.

:You’ve all done a good job,: Nancy said on the other end of the broadcaster.

“How do you know?” Lincoln asked his mother. “You didn’t see us.”

:Shut up,: Nancy said, exasperated. :You’re still alive. That’s a great job in my book.:

“If I were your mother,” Vincent said to Lincoln, “you wouldn’t be alive for long.”

:I like him!: Nancy called.

Margaret followed her father and Adelaide out of the house and onto Main Street. It was there Margaret saw the scout clearly for the first time. The Pralin family was one of the families she’d heard of, but had never met. Still, she thought she’d seen him around before.

He was a tall man, wiry with strength that was hinted at by the way he carried himself, but couldn’t be evidenced through the brown leather long coat he wore. He was a black man with short hair and a goatee. His lips were full and pouty and his eyes wide and so dark they reminded Margaret of coffee.

“Hi,” Margaret said, pushing Lincoln out of the way and holding her hand out to Vincent. “I’m Margaret.”

“Hey!” Lincoln said. “You can’t eat him!

Adelaide snickered, but covered her mouth with her hand and pushed ahead. She grabbed Lincoln’s sleeve and led him away from the two of them so that Margaret was alone with the scout.

Samuel frowned at the young man, but the scout didn’t notice.

“I’m Vincent,” he said in a low voice that rushed through Margaret’s ears like velvet. He took her hand, his multitude of weapons shifted and clanged as he bent over the back of her hand. His eyes never left hers, and she thought she might just get lost in their depths. Her heart fluttered when his wet lips brushed across her knuckles.

“Nice to meet you,” Margaret blushed.

“Vince, aren’t you supposed to finish your patrol?” Samuel barked from a few feet away.

Adelaide slapped Samuel on the shoulder. “Leave them alone!”

“Yes, sir,” Vincent said. He glanced at Margaret one last time before fading into the shadows of an alley.

Margaret sighed.

“That was good work with the necromancer,” Samuel told her.

“Very impressive,” Addie agreed.

“I agree,” Margaret said. She held up her short sword, slicked with necromancer and ghoul blood. “And I think this little beast has earned a spot on our trophy wall.”

Samuel nodded, and for a moment a swell of pride chased the butterflies away…but only for a moment.

Off the coast of North Shore, far out to see and away from Danthea, a cloud of bats fluttered through the night. Beady red eyes and a storm of leather wings tore through the air.

On the coast, standing on a rock above the cresting waves, a white haired man watched them come. His dark clothing kept him camouflaged against the deep of night in the deep of the night against the blackened Sea of Sorrows. He drew up his hood to shield himself from the glow of the blood moon.

The bats coalesced above the man, spiraled down to the ground, and formed into the figure of a tall man. Finally, the bats melted away revealing a stranger to Danthea. The vampire was tall, well-muscled, and with a face pitted and ruined from battle. His eyes glowed an angry, hungry red. His mouth was a thin circle of lips that the white-haired man knew could rosebud out into a pit of teeth, ready for feeding.

It was sheer will on the man’s part that the master vampire didn’t take him then. A tenuous touch of mancy kept the vampire in check.

You have people to cull?
The vampire asked in more thought than anything else.

The white-haired man motioned to a log cabin on the coast. “You can start here.”

The vampire floated toward the house. When he reached the Welsh home, he found the door unlocked.