The Vampire & Her Witch

”De-de-de-demon!” Keller sputtered, stumbling backwards until he tripped over his feet and fell to the ground, landing in an undignified sprawl on his backside, staring up at the scaled, horned, twisted demon in horror.

”Khal’ix, nûn!” The demon said, sounding insistent as it raised a menacing fist.

”Young master!” Cabrin shouted, drawing a heavy-bladed utility knife from its sheath at his waist and dashing forward as fast as he could to put himself between the demon and his master’s only son. ”Run!”

”Nēl kārlum, zātpāra!” the demon snarled, stepping forward and lashing out with speed that felt impossibly fast for a mishapen demon as large as this one. One moment, it was still several paces away, the next, its oversized hand clutched a fistful of Cabrin’s cloak and tunic, effortlessly lifting him off the ground as the demon scrutinized him with greenish eyes with a serpent’s elongated pupils.

”Ik’khakra, u’drikh kє tēla,” The demon snarled as it opened its mouth to reveal wickedly long fangs.

On the ground, Keller scrambled backwards on all fours, sliding his backside along the ground until he’d put several paces between himself and the demon beast before he flipped himself over and tried to scramble to his feet, dashing toward the sprawling farmhouse as quickly as his feet would carry him.

”Demons!” Keller shouted. ”Demons in the night! Demons!”

Beside the campfire, Cabrin summoned all of the strength that was left in his old bones and sinewy body as he stabbed his knife straight at the demon’s broad chest. But even with all of his strength, the old man was far too slow, and the demon was much, much too quick for the knife to cross even half the distance between them before it seized his hand.

The demon’s hands were massive, twice the size of a normal man’s, and it crushed Carbin’s hand in a sickening -CRUNCH- of shattering bones. The old man barely had time to cry out in pain, however, before the demon struck with the speed of a serpent, pulling him close enough to bite into his neck with wickedly sharp fangs.

Pain exploded in Carbin’s neck, followed a moment later by the feeling of something warm and wet sliding down his neck. A heartbeat later, the pain faded away, replaced by the strange sensations of the aches and pains of age fading away, leaving his mind drifting somewhere warm and hazy.

The campfire that the young master had been so disdainful of was the last thing Carbin saw as the fuel seemed to exhaust itself, growing dimmer and dimmer until there was no light left in the world. No light, no pain, only an endless darkness that seemed to call out to him, offering peace, quiet, and rest at the end of a long life of toil and struggle.

At least the young master got away, Carbin thought as the light faded from his eyes. At least I did that much...

For a moment, the only sounds were the dying crackle of the dung fire and the nervous lowing of cattle who could smell blood on the night wind. Then, as if summoned by the scent of fresh death, two more misshapen figures materialized from the fog-shrouded darkness, their footsteps silent on the damp grass as they approached their companion.

”Are humans so weak that they don’t even struggle at the moment of death?” One of the newcomers asked, staring at the old man’s limp corpse with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. ”Is this really the prey that Master Tausau wants us to hunt?”

”He tasted old,” the horned figure, a Clanless vampire named Sique, said, withdrawing his fangs from the old man’s neck and dropping him unceremoniously to the ground. ”He’d all but given up on life already. He isn’t our prey tonight.”

”Then why did you bother with him?” the third figure asked as he watched the young man running up the hill toward his home. The sounds of a crude bell being struck began to fill the air, adding to the young man’s panicked cries of ’demons’ as he raced for the safety of his home. ”You let the tasty one get away.”

”He’s still a calf,” Sique said, shaking its head. ”Master Tausau said to leave the young ones alone unless they use a weapon. Besides, I didn’t ’let him get away,’” the horned vampire said as he licked the blood from his lips.

”I sent him to fetch the human’s soldiers,” he said proudly. ”Seeing as we missed the banquet last night, don’t you think we should give Her Eternity and Her Dominion a fitting betrothal gift? What better than the broken blades of their enemy’s soldiers?”

”We weren’t supposed to fight their soldiers if we could avoid it,” the second man said as he glanced at the cattle, who seemed spooked by the scent of blood. ”If we lose our prize because we got greedy, then I doubt Her Eternity would value any gift we give her.”

After all, while giving the Dunns and the Hanrahans a bloody nose in the opening phases of Her Dominion, Ashlynn’s war of vengeance was important, their other objective was even more important.

Even though the Mongrel Horde could sustain themselves by taking blood from volunteers or the humans they hunted, but the rest of the army needed to suppliment their stores of food for the winter. It was the entire reason that they’d been sent to raid farms rather than burning hamlets to the ground in the first place and failing in their primary mission would have consequences for the other soldiers who were depending on them.

”You worry too much, brother,” the horned man said, grinning eagerly as he heard the sound of armor rustling in the night as soldiers within the hamlet began to scramble into their armor and retrieve their weapons. ”Come, we should make quick work of our prey so we can collect our prize,” he said as he faded back into the darkness and the fog, already moving in the direction of the hamlet.

Soon, the first soldiers serving the Dunn family would face the men of Tausau’s Mongrel horde on a dark and moonless night. In a battle where they outnumbered their enemy by four to one, it should have been a crushing victory for the young captain watching over Kitcher’s Fell.

But of all the horrors the young captain had trained to face, no one had ever expected that he would face off against even one vampire, much less three of them. If he’d known, perhaps he wouldn’t have led his men out from behind the hamlet’s palisade wall.

Maybe he would have considered whether or not it was worth risking his life in the hopes of currying favor with the wealthiest family in Kitchel’s Fell by charging to the rescue. Maybe he would have sent a man on a fast horse to ride through the night to summon reinforcements from the neighboring hamlet.

But the men of the Mongrel Horde had been let off their leashes after suffering decades and even centuries of scorn and disdain from the descendants of High Lord Hamdi’s other progeny. They’d been treated as weak, inferior, and defective for so long that many of them had come to believe it was true.

Now that they had a chance to prove otherwise, none of them would be content until they returned, not only with their prize of captured livestock, but with proof that they’d hunted dangerous prey of their own and emerged from the hunt covered in blood and glory.

Of course, Kitchel’s Fell was only one of dozens of hamlets across the Dunn Barony, but the scene playing out there was already being repeated eight times over across the Barony... And this was only the first night of their assault!