The Vampire & Her Witch

The curved blade in Owain’s hand caught the torchlight as he turned it in his hand, briefly admiring the way the flames danced along its edge as he crossed the room toward the pale-faced acolytes. It was a good knife, well-balanced and sharp enough to part flesh from bone with minimal effort.

It wasn’t as good as the skinning knife he carried when he hunted wild game for the feasting table, or when he hunted demons in the wilderness, but it didn’t have to be. After all, he wasn’t here to claim a trophy today, and even if he dared to harvest the skull of an Inquisitor to add to the collection in the office he’d just inherited, it wouldn’t belong to either of these minions.

The acolytes watched the knife with wide, terrified eyes, their breath coming in short, panicked gasps that misted in the frigid air of the cell. They’d seen knives like that in the past, not just in the kitchens, but in the hands of their mentor when he carefully cut away brands, tattoos and other markings that might indicate a person was a witch or a member of a heretical cult... often without waiting for the accused heretic to die before extracting his pound of flesh.

But Owain had no intention of filleting them. Not yet, at least.

”You’re overdressed,” he said simply, and when the acolytes didn’t immediately respond, he stepped forward and pressed the tip of the blade against the collar of Niklas’s crimson robe. ”Don’t move,” Owain commanded the acolyte who perched precariously on his tiptoes. ”If you move, I’ll cut you.”

The young man froze, his eyes going even wider as Owain drew the knife downward with deliberate slowness, parting the fabric from throat to hem in a single, smooth cut.

Owain took his time, neatly cutting through each fastening and pressing just hard enough that Niklas could feel the point of the knife trailing along his flesh, occasionally biting deeply enough to leave behind a thin red scratch, but no more as Owain cut away his robes in the same way he’d remove the hide of a beast he wanted to claim as a trophy.

The robe fell away in several pieces as Owain removed his sleeves, cowl, belt, and every other piece of the holy vestments. The scraps of crimson fabric slowly pooled at Niklas’s feet in a splash of red that looked almost like blood against the cold gray stone of the dungeon floor. Beneath the sacred garment, the acolyte wore only a simple linen shift, one that offered little protection against the bone-deep cold that pervaded the dungeon.

”Well now, imagine that,” Owain said as he stood, smiling at the trembling, shivering young man. ”You do know how to follow instructions,” he said as he returned the point of the knife to the young man’s flesh, directly beneath the point of his jaw. ”Keep it up, you might just survive this,” he said, pressing just hard enough with the tip of the knife to spill a single drop of blood before moving to the next man and repeating the process.

”Your Abbot,” Owain said conversationally as he set the knife back on the table, wiping it clean with slow, deliberate movements. ”Has signed a Writ of Excommunication for your transgressions,” he said, pausing to adjust the heavy brass rings on his fingers before turning back to face the shivering acolytes. ”You are no longer servants of the Church. You are no longer under the protection of the Inquisition. You are nothing.”

”Those no longer belong to you,” Owain said, gesturing to the crimson robes pooled on the floor. ”You have no right to wear them, and they cannot protect you anymore,” he added with a cold, cruel smile. ”And since you are nothing, no one will care what happens to you down here. No one will come looking. No one will ask questions. The only thing that will protect you is the truthfulness and the completeness of your answers,” he said.

”My lord, please,” Samlet stammered, his teeth already beginning to chatter from the cold. ”We’ve done nothing, nothing that wasn’t in service to the Holy Lord of Light. Everything we did, every action we took, was under Inquisitor Percivus’s guidance. We were following orders, we were... -URK!-”

Samlet’s voice cut off sharply with a pained grunt as Owain’s fist caught him low in the belly, just beneath his navel, streaking with devastating force.

The brass rings amplified the impact, driving the air from Samlet’s lungs in a single, agonized wheeze. The blow lifted the young man onto his toes, and then his weight carried him backward, the chains attached to his wrist shackles going taut with a rattling clang. He swung there, suspended entirely by his bound wrists, feet kicking uselessly at empty air as he struggled to draw breath.

The iron cuffs bit deep into his flesh, the metal edges cutting into his skin as his full weight dragged against them. Blood began to well up around the shackles, dark droplets running down his forearms in thin rivulets. His face turned red, then purple, his mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air as his body convulsed with the desperate need to breathe.

Owain watched with casual interest, waiting until Samlet’s feet finally found purchase on the stone floor again, until the young man managed to gasp in a ragged, wheezing breath. Only then did he speak.

”Following orders,” Owain repeated softly, almost gently, as if he were explaining something to a particularly slow child. ”Is that supposed to matter to me? Do you think that excuses what you’ve done?” Owain asked, flexing his hand as he spoke, examining the brass rings that gleamed dully in the torchlight.

”You put your hands on my woman,” he said in a soft voice that dripped with malice. ”You tortured the future mother of my children, and you watched her cousin die in these cells.”

He took a step closer, his eyes blazing with barely restrained fury, and both acolytes flinched, wishing they could do anything to escape the shackles that bound them.

”I don’t care whose orders you were following,” Owain continued, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. ”I don’t care if the Holy Lord of Light himself commanded you to do it. You. Did. It.” Each word was punctuated with emphasis, his eyes boring into theirs. ”And now you’re going to tell me exactly what you did. Every detail of your torture. Every indignity you inflicted on her. Every moment of suffering you inflicted, you’re going to tell me all of it.”

”And if I think you’re holding back,” he added, rolling his shoulders and loosening the muscles in preparation for what was to come. ”If I think you’re trying to minimize what you did or spare yourselves the shame of confession...” He raised his fist again, letting the brass rings catch the light. ”Then the Holy Lord of Light won’t be the only one holding you to account for your sins.”