Chapter 33: Vol 2 – Chapter 13 – Cat and Mouse

“You seem smart enough, Duncan,” the tall vampire taunted. “You know this is already over. We can do this a multitude of ways, but please note I have a preference. The less blood I have to wash out of my clothes, the better.” he sneered.

Duncan brandished Minerva menacingly, “Quite arrogant of you to assume you will walk away from this encounter with just some dirty laundry.”

The vampire smiled again, his sharp teeth glistening, “We were told you had a spine. I look forward to beating some of the humans that foolishly followed you here to death with it.”

I gulped loudly, but thankfully no one seemed to notice. Despite the verbal threats, none of the vampires were moving or preparing for combat. They stood calmly, unblinking, and unflinching. I still didn’t see more than ten of them, but with their capabilities, ten was plenty. Ten thralls would have been difficult to overcome with minimal casualties, but this was worse than that. I felt my heart beat faster as I realized we weren’t all going to walk away from this. 

“So, which will it be? Can we get on with the feasting or are you going to make us work for it? We weren’t given instructions on how it was to be done, just that your death was the end result.”

“You are all just well-dressed lackeys then?” Duncan laughed. “Run along and summon your master. I’m on a deadline and have bigger fish to fry than you.”

At that, the vampire bristled, and some snarled and bared their teeth. They weren’t pleased with being so easily brushed aside. 

“Humans have gotten so arrogant in the past few centuries. They have forgotten whose boot was on their neck and our absence in this world as pest control has been sorely missed. It’s time you remember who the rightful rulers of these lands are!”

With a snap of his fingers, the vampire on his left vanished for just a moment, before reappearing. 

With a still beating heart in a bloody fist.

I gasped in shock as one of our soldiers suddenly fell forward, his armor clattering as he hit the rocky ground. I watched as thick blood started pooling out from underneath him, soaking the ground and red snow in an even deeper red hue. I choked as I saw the fist sized hole ripped through the back of his armor, the vampire reaching in effortlessly through the soldier’s defenses to claim his prize. The man had made no sound or cry as he was killed. It had been instantaneous.

I turned back and shivered as the vampire brought the heart up to bite into it like a fresh ripe apple plucked from a tree, the blood staining his purple lips. Satisfied with the treat, he tossed the rest of the heart aside behind him. The nearby vampires eyed it greedily but none of them moved to claim it as it plopped wetly away. I gripped Lily tightly, realizing my hands were starting to get clammy with sweat, as I watched it roll away in the snow. 

“Satisfied? I can do it again if you need another demonstration. Surrender, and we will kill you before we feast. I can’t guarantee the alternative if you struggle.” He eyed us one by one down the line hungrily, and I unconsciously fell back a step as he swept his gaze past me. 

Duncan was undeterred. “You also seem to have forgotten how resilient humans are. We outnumber you and are more than capable of returning you to the dust you long since should have been.”

The vampire ran his hands through his slicked back hair and laughed loudly. 

“Outnumber us? You should learn to count, old man. Or have you gone senile as well as delusional?”

I paused at this and looked back down our lines for a quick headcount.

The vamp was right.

Of the seventeen soldiers that accompanied us after leaving Rosethorne, six of them were missing. Seven, if you counted the one they had just made an example of. I then held my breath and glanced around again. Kit was also gone! 

No!

I shook my head quickly. Focus! Kit was fine. He had to be! I had to pay attention to what was in front of me, what I could control! Despite my attempts to get ahold of myself, I couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. This was going to be messy.

Chad was on the same page as I was and reached back to position me behind him. 

The vampire wasn’t stupid. He understood we had all done the math and was enjoying letting the doubt and fear set in on our faces, but we weren’t prepared for his next move.

He snapped his fingers again, and we heard clanking behind us.

Several of us risked turning to see our missing comrades stalking towards us slowly. They were still wearing their gear, but their helmets were gone, and their skin was pale and pulled tight around their gruesome faces, each frozen with an expression of terror as they had died. Each pale neck had puncture marks with crusted blood trails from the treacherous bite. Their eyes were glossed over, their hands were deformed and clawed, awkwardly gripping whatever weapon they had brought with them.

They had been turned. 

My eyes widened as I came to grips with this new threat. I checked each of them and breathed a sigh of relief to see Kit was not among their number. He had to be ok, but where had he run off to now?

“I believe the odds are heavily in our favor now, Duncan, but it’s clear you want to die a warrior’s death. Such a shame you are choosing violence for your companions as well.”

Duncan roared, spit flying angrily from his mouth, and he charged the heart of the pack of menacing monsters in front of us. 

Another snap.

Several hands exploded from the ground beneath us and started clawing at our legs, attempting to pull us to the ground, as hungry thralls pulled themselves out of their hiding places for the ambush. 

I leaped back and hacked at an outstretched claw. 

This was bad, this was very bad!

We were surrounded and had even lost control of our current position. I glanced back up at where the vamps had been standing, but just as suddenly as they had seemed to appear, they were gone. I whirled my head left and right, expecting to see them pouncing on a soldier still standing or maybe a flash of color as they ran through our group, but I saw nothing. 

Were they that determined to not get their clothes dirty? Or maybe Duncan’s threats of our group shook them more than they let on and they retreated until our numbers had been further thinned? 

Either way, the situation looked drastically improved with their sudden disappearance. The surprise from the thralls caught us off guard, but it seemed there weren’t even that many, and our soldiers had been alert enough that the surprise attack had not cost us. I saw no more of our soldiers falling, and Chad and Duncan were venting their frustrations on anything within reach.

I turned back to face our turned six, and saw them lumbering in. They were moving very slowly, slower than I would have expected anyway for a newly turned. Duncan had mentioned that the turning happens at nightfall once bitten, but that was a bite from a thrall, not from something more powerful. Also, who was to say what we knew about what vampires could do? They hadn’t fought them in centuries after all. 

But whatever influence the more powerful elf vampires had used to quickly turn our guys, it had made them a shell of what they might have been capable of if the vamps had more time. They swayed and clumsily continued to us, almost as if they were zombies instead of some weaker vampire thrall.

“Chad! I need you!” I yelled, and I dashed towards a couple of them, hoping to cull some numbers and prevent our remaining from being overwhelmed. 

My breath hot in the cold air, I paced my breathing to steady my nerves and slid low under a slow swing from my first obstacle. I immediately stood and jabbed Lily into the side of his skull and he jerked awkwardly on his stiff neck as I yanked the dagger back out. 

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“I’m sorry.” I whispered. 

I had killed before today. Many times, now, with my undead horde hunting in the early days of my training and then in Rosethorne, but I had never killed someone I had known. It felt different. It felt wrong. 

For a split second, time slowed down as I watched a familiar face fall to the ground, and I tried to make it easier by telling myself I did right by him in ending the cruel existence the vampires had left him. 

“Amelia! Watch out!”

I blinked and raised Lily just in time to block an incoming swipe from the next armored foe. The blow may have been slow, but the strength behind it was still unnatural, and my legs gave way as I fell to one knee. I grunted and my arms started to shake with the effort needed to keep the blade from continuing to fall towards my neck. 

Chad arrived not a moment too soon and separated the head from his shoulders, immediately releasing the weight on me. 

“Are you ok? Are you going to be able to do this?” he asked, a serious look on his face, but a flash of concern in his eyes. 

I nodded as I stood. “I’m ok. It just…. took a second. We knew them, you know?”

He nodded back in understanding, then turned and leapt to the next stumbling armored thrall. I turned the opposite direction and ran to catch up to the couple that had wandered past me and towards the skirmish in the clearing.

We were scattered everywhere. I only saw a handful of us still fighting. I didn’t see any more of us lying dead, but the confusion had further separated us and had taken away the one strength we’d had. 

One of ours was still dealing with a thrall that had snagged him from the ground attack and had his back turned to the former soldier he had once called an ally, who was about to attack him from behind.

Not today.

He had dropped his sword and was reaching out hungrily to grab his victim, only I got there first, and rammed my dagger into the back of his head. I then heaved my shoulder into his back and shoved as I pulled Lily away, forcing the now armored paperweight to fall onto the thrall. 

The thrall screamed as the heavy corpse fell on top of it, forgetting it’s previous attempts at a mouthful of the living and thrashing at the metal armored husk now collapsing on top of it. The soldier wasted no time and took advantage of the assistance, slicing his sword through the thrall’s head, cutting it in two. 

He turned to salute with a wave of his sword, only to pause in confusion as he realized his rescuer. I just grinned and waved, then pointed behind him at his buddy who needed some help.

I turned to look for Chad and found that he had finished hacking away at our remaining fallen. The armored threat was now dealt with, and I didn’t see more than a couple of thralls still left. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t see Duncan or half of what was left of our forces either.

And still no damn Kit. 

I ran up to Chad as he finished up.

“You see where Duncan ran off to? And I haven’t seen Kit since we made it into the clearing.”

Chad huffed and steadied his breathing as he looked around.

“Damn it, Kit!”

I’ll take that as a “no”.

So, where was Duncan?

Suddenly, one of the elf vamps flew past us, hurtling into a thick tree trunk. He was bloody and his clothes were torn and rumpled. 

We had found Duncan.

As it struggled and winced to get up off the ground, I saw it wasn’t the taller vampire who had been running the show. Duncan thundered past us at a speed I hadn’t ever seen him use, one that should have been impossible for someone his size and heavily armored. 

Still in a prone position, the vampire didn’t stand a chance as it lifted a hand to attempt to catch Minerva’s falling axe head. The axe cleaved through hand, arm, bone, and anything else  on it’s way down and through the vampire’s head. 

Duncan then kicked the corpse off Minerva and tossed another vampire’s head he had been holding down on the ground next to it, before stomping it into paste angrily.

He had gotten two of them? By the Goddess!

Chad and I stood dumbfounded as we watched Duncan finish his outrage against what was left of two of the more powerful vampires that humanity had seen in ages. 

I leaned into Chad and whispered, “One of these days, you’ll need to tell me everything else about that thundering mountain of a man over there.”

Chad raised his eyebrows along with my shock of the situation and blew out a breath. Despite the humbling losses Chad had endured against Duncan during their sparring, this appeared to be the first time he had seen this side to Duncan and he was just as taken aback as I was. 

Duncan seemed completely unphased, as he walked over to us and took us both in.

“Good, you’re both still alive. Kit is also hunting them in the trees, so we have that going for us as well.” 

I closed my eyes and said mumbled a thanks to the Goddess that Kit was safe. I had refused to let my mind wander to the alternatives.

Duncan looked around, “We have all been scattered, and the rest of the vampires still have us caged in. They fanned out and encircled us to make sure we couldn’t run, which was their mistake. We may be more vulnerable when separated, but so are they. I chased after those two to thin their numbers. If we move quickly, the three of us can work together and eliminate more of them before they regroup and attack as one. Hurry!”

Without another word, he rushed off, expecting us to follow. Chad did so without hesitation. I looked around again, concerned that we weren’t attempting to regroup ourselves and attack in a larger force. While it looked like our remaining forces had survived the ambush, leaving them lost in the trees was almost like leaving them for dead. I wondered if we had gotten far enough away from Ash, Dorian, and Julius that they were safe. I also desperately hoped they hadn’t been dumb enough to try and follow after us. 

I couldn’t dwell on it all long. I hated it, but Duncan and Chad were already getting away from me and I didn’t wish to lose them. I said a prayer to the Goddess for our soldier’s safety and turned and gave chase.

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