The Blood Thief of Whitten Hall (A Magic & Machinery Novel Book 2) (24 page)

The ancient vampire withdrew its mouth from Simon’s neck and threw back its head with a heavy sigh. Simon slid from his weakened grasp and fell awkwardly to the limestone pedestal at the vampire’s feet. For a long moment, Simon lay there unmoving before finally beginning to stir.

The Inquisitor coughed and reached up meekly toward his neck, feeling the thick saliva coating his throat. As his eyes fluttered open, he moved with a sense of urgency, his fingers frantically searching for puncture wounds across his flesh.

“You won’t find any,” the vampire said softly.

Simon glanced inquisitively upward at the frail vampire.

“Bite marks,” the ancient man continued. “Holes in your neck. You won’t find any. I didn’t bite you.”

Despite the vampire’s reassurances, Simon continued a furtive search across his skin.

“Stop that nonsense at once,” the vampire demanded, though his words fell on deaf ears. He coughed hoarsely and wiped spittle from his lips. “Despite my longing to feed and the near point of starvation at which these savages keep me, I want you alive.”

Simon slowly lowered his hand, using it instead to push himself up from his prone position. Cautiously, Simon glanced over his shoulder toward the closed stone doors that served as the only entrance and exit from the room. The room was empty, his other captors having departed with the chancellor.

He looked back to the elder monster and arched an eyebrow inquisitively. “You want me alive for what purpose?”

The vampire leaned forward, his bones audibly creaking from the effort. “You, young human, are my path to freedom from this infernal prison.”

“Why me?” Simon asked, furrowing his brow nervously. “Why spare my life when you’ve clearly taken so many others?”

The vampire sagged in his chair, his shoulders slumping forward. “There’s strength in you, a different sort of power than what I see amidst the chancellor and his ilk. There is honor and strength unbridled.”

Simon shifted his weight and slid his feet from the dais, resting them on the step. Despite his bone weariness, he forced himself onto his knees and finally to an unsteady standing position. He felt naked without a weapon with which to defend himself. His pistol was gone. The Inquisitor kit had been left with the rest of his packed belongings, he assumed in his room at the inn. Even the stone chamber in which they found themselves lacked the wooden beams and discarded axe handles of the coarse stone room beyond the doorway. He was unarmed, in the presence of a truly ancient evil.

“If you think I’ll set you free, you’re sadly mistaken. I destroy magic within the kingdom, not release it upon its citizens.”

The vampire reached toward Simon, but the chains on his wrists caught on the throne. The chains snapped taut, forcing his arms backward. The vampire looked at his prison and sighed disconcertingly.

The vampire sat back on its stone throne, resting one arm comfortably on the chair’s armrest. Its hand settled perfectly into a well-worn groove in the stone, where it had been polished smooth from years of wear. Its other hand stroked its chin as it observed the wary Inquisitor.

“You speak of destroying magic in all its forms, yet you travel in close confines with that which you purport to hate.”

Simon narrowed his eyes as he took another cautious step down the stairs. “My companion is different from you. There’s goodness in her. She’s a victim of circumstance, not a monster borne of evil.”

The vampire wheezed in a faint semblance of a laugh. “You know this of me? You know that I’m evil incarnate?”

Simon shook his head. “I don’t need to know of you. I see your offspring and the evil they’ve committed. Tell me that you, yourself, haven’t partaken of the meals they’ve offered.”

The vampire leaned forward slowly. “I have fed. To tell you otherwise would be to tell a lie neither of us would believe. Yet you know nothing of me. You know nothing of my time spent in this abysmal stone prison, its walls serving as a far better cage than any metal bars ever could. You know nothing of the torture I’ve endured, staring at the same walls, with the same burning torches, with my same writing carved into the walls from a time where my sanity had wandered far from my body.”

Simon leaned against the nearest wall for support but glowered at the vampire. “I can’t give you what you want. There’s enough of a vampire problem in Whitten Hall without releasing yet another.”

“I am nothing like them!” the vampire hissed. “Calling them vampires is blasphemy. They are insignificant specks, their life not even measured as a grain of sand in the great hourglass of existence. I was alive when your kingdom was but a conglomeration of tribes, slaughtering, raping, and pillaging one another for the glory and the pleasure. You were child playthings when I was already ancient!”

His exuberance resulted in another coughing fit. As the vampire settled once more, it pushed loose strands of wispy, white hair from his face.

“You say you’re not evil then?”

The vampire glanced toward Simon, his skin stretched taut across his skull. “I could not deceive you and say that I have not committed evil deeds, but the deeds do not define the man.”

“The deeds are the man, not the words,” Simon countered. He was engaging in dialogue with the vampire despite his predilection, knowing he had little else he could do until he was certain the path beyond the stone doors were clear of vampire vermin. “Convince me you’re not evil. Convince me that the patron of the night tribe against which I fight isn’t evil incarnate. Tell me your tale of how you came to be in this prison.”

“Do you know of the Rift?” the vampire whispered, closing his eyes as though recalling fonder times long past. “Whitten spoke of it, a vestibule between our worlds.” He drew a deep breath from between his clenched teeth. “Long ago… long, long ago, yes, I was from the far side of the Rift.”

“The Rift only came about a decade ago. How is it that you’ve been here so long?”

The vampire opened his eyes slowly and fixed his scarlet pupils on the Inquisitor. “Many lifetimes ago in my world, the one of magic as you refer to it, I was a man of position and power. I had a small army at my command and vassals who bowed so low that they kissed the ground in my presence. I was a creature of the night, and their respect for me was only equaled by their fear.

“For years, I satisfied my bloodlust by feeding on the flesh of our enemies. No one missed the highwaymen who vanished in the night. Invading armies were splintered as their scouts were found emaciated, drained of their blood. Because of my gift, our kingdom lived in peace.”

Simon glanced around the room, longing for a weapon.

“Do I bore you already with my tale?” the vampire asked.

The Inquisitor looked back to the thin creature. “You’re hardly providing a convincing argument of why I shouldn’t kill you. It sounds like you were every bit the monster I believe you to be.”

The vampire sighed heavily. “I was, to be sure. Please forgive me, but you must hear the horrid tale of my youth to fully appreciate why I deserve my freedom now.”

Simon gestured for the vampire to continue, knowing he had little other choice at the moment.

The vampire clenched its hands into fists. His fingers moved begrudgingly, having spent far too long grasping the arms of the throne. “The Barony was a utopia for those under my protection, but our enemies grew wary of our borders. Bandits refused to traverse our forests. Neighboring fiefdoms forewent invading our lands for easier conquest elsewhere. And I? I grew hungry.”

Simon stepped cautiously forward until he was certain the strength had adequately returned to his legs. Intrigued, he sat on the bottommost step of the dais, knowingly out of reach of both the hands and feet of the bound monster.

“You fed on your people.”

“Not the healthy or strong; never those who contributed to the well-being of the lands,” the vampire said, as though his words justified his actions. “I fed on the ill and the elderly, on those disabled, those who were more a burden on their families than a boon. In the blindness of my youth, I thought they should be appreciative of the service I provided.”

“They turned on you, didn’t they?” Simon asked matter-of-factly.

The vampire’s gaze grew distant and unfocused as he recalled a time nearly forgotten. Eventually, he shook his head and returned his focus to Simon. “Forgive me. Without regular sustenance, my mind has a tendency to wander.”

The vampire wheezed as he continued. “They came to my keep with torches and pitchforks. They stood at the far side of the portcullis and demanded my blood.”

“Is that when you fled; how you found your way to our world?”

The vampire paused and appeared perplexed. He furrowed his brow sadly. Were it not for the state of undeath in which it found itself, Simon was sure the vampire would have shed a morose tear. “Flee? No, my boy, I slaughtered them to a man. My anger fueled my bloodlust and I descended on them, even as my army marched through the gates. They were peasants and laborers, ill-equipped to face my wrath. Before I could recognize the error of my wrath, their blood flowed like rivers through the streets. I opened their arteries and filled my moat to capacity.”

Simon swallowed slowly, aghast at the monster’s admonition. There was no glee upon the vampire’s face as he recalled the wholesale slaughter of his subjects, as though only remorse remained. The Inquisitor took a deep breath and focused on the vampire. Despite the Inquisitor’s outrage at the admitted atrocities, there was also a burgeoning sense of sympathy for the creature, as though his years trapped in this realm had served as a sort of penance. Simon yearned to hear the end of the story.

“Then how is it you came to be in our lands?”

The vampire lowered its hand back to the worn armrest and smiled at Simon. “You men of science never cease to amaze me. Your curiosity is stronger than your stomach. I speak of the genocide of my people and all you want is for me to finish my story. You’re all mind and no heart; so very different from my own lands.”

“Your story,” Simon insisted. “I must know how it ends.”

“A vampire must eat,” the creature on the throne said. For a moment, Simon thought he was referring to feeding on him, until the vampire quickly continued. “I had sustained my life by feeding on the infirmed and the convalescing. Yet in my fit of rage, I had killed them all, not just the weakened but also every living man, woman, and child residing in my barony. Without them, I had no source of sustenance and I grew hungry once again.”

The vampire reached up and rubbed his eyes. “I found food where I could, in the veins of the very soldiers who had helped me slaughter my servants. When they discovered my treachery, they, too, fled. I was finally truly alone, the lord of an empty, lifeless land. All had abandoned me, save for my closest vizier, a witch who had the ability to scry the worlds.

“It was he who told me of your world. He had foreseen it, he told me. There was a bleed between our worlds, a small, unstable portal. It led here, to your world, though it was a time so long ago that you have barely recorded it in your books of history.”

“It was a feeding ground for you,” Simon said as he spat on the ground in disgust.

“Judge me as you like, but I saw in your world a feast of flesh the likes of which you could not imagine. I didn’t see the men and women of your land as anything more than food. In my land, there are others of my kind, but here, amongst your ancestors, I knew I would be a dark god.”

“Then how is it you wound up a prisoner in a dark cavern?”

The vampire glanced around the room, where his unkempt fingernails had carved into the limestone over the centuries of captivity. “The portal was unstable, flickering at its periphery even as we arrived. One moment, it showed the surface world, full of life. Yet when I stepped into the bleed, the portal shifted to here, depositing me in a natural cavern far beneath the earth. No entrance. No exit. No hope of escape. Only silence and with it, introspection and reflection.”

Simon toyed absently with a discarded sliver of limestone. “Would you have me believe that you discovered the error of your ways during your time in captivity, that you became a changed man?”

The vampire chuckled softly. “Young human, I don’t believe you understand how great a time passed while I was imprisoned, nor how strongly the silence of a stone cell weighs upon your mind. I don’t know how to convince you of the sincerity of my words, but hundreds of years alone made me realize the error of my more youthful indiscretions. I want my freedom, but not to return to the sins of my youth, but rather to atone for them.”