Late that afternoon the three of us returned to the temple to
visit the priestess. She looked a lot more tired than she had in the
morning; her face was drawn, her eyes red-rimmed and watery.

We
offered our condolences, and she thanked us for liberating the temple
and the city. Then Brea pulled something out of her skirt pocket.

“I nearly forgot!” she said. “I found this wandering the catacombs. Does it belong to your temple?”

I stared at the slim little book in her hands. With the vampire lord gone, power came off it in waves.

Very thin book, only fifty or sixty pages. Blank black cover. Enormous power.

Fuck!

Out of all the books I was searching for, there was maybe one as scary as the one Brea was waving around right now.

“Yes,
it is a treasure our temple purchased years ago so that we could keep
it safe and unused. Safe!” The priestess almost spat the last word.
“Clearly we’re not up to the task, but maybe you are. Keep it, as a
reward for services rendered.”

Brea shrugged and turned to me. “You want it?” she asked. “I have no use for it.”

My eyes widened. No. No I didn’t want it, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. “Thank you,” I said, and took the book from Brea.

After
we left the temple, I asked Brea what her plans were. “The king’s
already sending soldiers down into the catacombs with torches and
stakes. With the wakened vampires gone, the corpselings won’t last to
sundown, and now thanks to you we’ve got the book we came for in the
first place.” I paused. “You did good down there, in the end. We’d be
okay with you coming with us, if you wanted.”

Brea shook her head.
“I’d like to, but I still have business here. And then whatever the
king decides, I need to take the message back to Castle Brinksmoor.”

I shrugged. “Well, hopefully we’ll run into each other again. Take care, Brea!”

“I’m sure we will…” She smiled teasingly. “‘Goddess.’“

Grr! I’m never living that down, am I?

–

The next morning, Iason and I finally moved on from Mercia. “Where to, boss?” he asked.

I
pondered a moment, then pointed in the general direction of Kymru.
“There’s a book somewhere that way,” I answered. But as we started to
walk, it wasn’t that book I was thinking about, but the one now in my
pack, waiting for me to work up the nerve to try to send it home.

The Rite of Uncreation.
Just the title–of the book, and of the only spell it contained–was
enough to make me nervous. Like I’d said, there were only a handful of
things that could destroy a soul. This spell was one of them. In fact,
it could destroy anything: a soul, a city, a mountain, a spellbook.

A god.

Which
sounds incredibly powerful, and it is. There’s just one problem: To put
it bluntly, the problem with a spell that can destroy anything is
getting it to stop before it destroys… well, everything.

“Hey, Lemma,” said Iason. “I’ve been wondering something.”

“Yeah?”

“You mentioned when we first came to Mercia that the book you sort-of sensed was really powerful.”

“Yeah.” Was my voice shaking? I really hoped my voice wasn’t shaking. “Yeah, it is.”

“So… when I touched that first book, the one you got from Brinksmoor, it flung me fifty feet.”

“Ten, tops.”

“Whatever,” he said. “Point is… how come Brea was able to touch it?”

“Well that’s…” I paused. “That’s because…” I paused again, longer. “That’s a really good question,” I finally admitted.

As we walked on, I thought about it, and about some other things, too. About how powerful someone would have to be to touch that
book if they weren’t its rightful librarian. About how gods and
goddesses would sometimes walk the Earth, pretending to be mortals, just
to see what we’d do. About what steps a goddess or three might take if
their temple was being defiled by vampires.

About rewards for services rendered.

…Nah. Couldn’t be.

Iason and the vampire lord fought furiously, his blade flashing but never quite landing, the lord’s own slashing claws unable to get close to Iason without having to shy back from contact with the sword.

I ached all over, but nothing seemed to be broken as Brea helped me to my feet. Which meant this was going to hurt, but at least it’d be possible. I staggered toward the two combatants, the best fire spell I could conjure up in my current state of pain and exhaustion burning in my hand. I drew back to cast it–

The vampire blurred, and my fistful of fire was in his hand. “Nah-ah-ah,” he chided. “Be a good girl and sit back–” He made a choking noise and staggered back, the stake I’d borrowed from Brea and hidden in my left hand buried deep in his chest.

He clawed at the stake, already beginning to shrivel, and I let loose with the fire spell. Now he didn’t just have a pointy piece of solid oak in his heart, he had a burning pointy piece of solid oak. He gasped and moaned, clawing at the stake. Then he managed to get a grip on it–

C’mon, really? All that and he was still able to start drawing it out of himself? What would it take to kill this guy?

Iason’s sword swept sideways through the vampire’s neck. His head struck the ground; a moment later the rest of him did. As we watched, they shriveled into a skeleton, bits of rag clinging to dusty bone.

Well, ask a stupid question.

–

We climbed out of the collapsed catacomb chamber into the bright, late-morning city above. I blinked at the sun while Brea clung to my arm.

“Ew, really?” I asked Iason. “A trophy? That’s so… barbaric!”

“This isn’t a trophy,” he responded, weighing the vampire lord’s skull thoughtfully in his hand. “A vampire powerful enough to leave a skeleton isn’t going to stay dead easily. One drop of blood and he’ll be back to life, as bad as ever.”

“Seriously?” I demanded. Vampires were proving to be even more annoying than I’d thought!

“Fortunately,” Iason continued, “there’s a way to make it permanent. Just need to stuff this full of garlic and bury it upside-down at a crossroads.”

“Seriously?” I repeated. “Is everything about vampire lords stupid and annoying?”

“Oh, that wasn’t a vampire lord,” said Iason.

“What?”

“Wasn’t a vampire lord,” he repeated. “A real vampire lord has centuries of experience. That’s time to master all kinds of skill, including combat and strategy. This guy hadn’t. He had the power of a lord, but was way younger.”

“How?” I asked, puzzled.

“Well, the priestesses were the same way,” he said. “It usually takes years for a corpseling to consume enough blood to awaken as a true vamp, but they must’ve done it in a matter of weeks.”

“So, what’s the explanation?”

“Corpselings!” Iason was really enjoying being the one to explain things for once, wasn’t he? Gah, am I this insufferable when I know something he doesn’t? No, I’m sure I’m not.

He continued, “They made a huge number of corpselings, way more than normal for a single vampire. And you saw him drain that priestess. That’s what he was doing–turning as many people as possible, then every time the corpselings fed he and the priestesses would drain them. Massive amounts of blood in a short amount of time, so they advanced in power incredibly quickly, but not experience.”

“Huh,” I said. Brea nestled against me in such a way that if I glanced down and to my left I could look straight down her dress into her very ample cleavage, not that that was something I would do.

Iason coughed. “Speaking of trophies…” he said.

Yeah, I should probably break the spells on Brea and then spend some time apologizing, shouldn’t I?

The sword dropped out of my hands, and for just a moment my world was once again nothing but gold-flecked green and the first powerful thrust of master’s hot hard will into my soft wet mind.

Just a moment. Then the falling sword struck him on the head. There was a sizzling sound and an unearthly screech while I went flying through the air. The vampire lord staggered back, the right side of his face burned and blackened, but also covered with little white traceries of frost, as if it had been frozen and set on fire at the same time.

While I lay painfully on the floor where he’d tossed me aside, he spun in place, then fixated on the vamp wrestling with Iason. She’d managed to get on top, and was straddling him. He had his arms on her shoulders and was holding her back, but she was slowly, inexorably pushing forward and down for a kiss.

Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for the rest of us, she was slightly closer to the vampire lord than I was.

“Blood…” he moaned, then staggered forward, grabbed her hair, and yanked her one-handed to her feet. While Iason rolled away and sprang upright, the vampire lord turned his minion’s head to the side and sank his fangs into her neck.

A moment later she sagged to the ground, just another shriveled corpseling, while his burned skin writhed and healed.

I felt something warm next to me. “Goddess!” gasped Brea. “Oh, my goddess Lemma, what has that fiend done to you?” She was crying–legit crying–as she checked me for injuries.

Ouch. I was going to have some explaining to do once I broke those spells, huh? Well, no time now. And hey, maybe we’d all die first.

“Don’t worry about me right now,” I said. “Just get that sword to Iason, now!”

The vampire lord still had his back to us as he advanced on Iason. “Next on the menu,” he hissed, stalking forward.

Then the sword arched across the room, and a dumbfounded Iason managed to catch it and raise it. The vampire halted, hesitating, clearly remembering what it had felt like the first time.

Also: damn. I’d barely been able to lift that thing, and Brea threw it halfway across the room? Country girls, am I right?

Still, even with the sword, this was an immensely powerful vampire. Iason’s victory was far from guaranteed. Fortunately, I had a spell that might be able to end things, if I could pull it off.

I concentrated. This was going to be hard; instead of tapping a natural element, I was going to try to create a burst of pure force, which is much more difficult–that’s why I use wind to make shields and push things, instead of trying to do it directly. But I had no choice–wind just wasn’t strong enough to do what I wanted, at least not without creating pressures powerful enough to kill us all.

I took a deep breath, focused, let it out slowly, and then pushed. The ceiling of the chamber creaked, groaned… and then exploded upwards, shoved up and out of the way by my spell. I sagged back, exhausted, while a shower of dirt hailed down into the room.

Accompanied by pure, unfiltered sunlight.

The corpseling screamed, burst into flames, and was gone. Unfortunately, things weren’t quite so dramatic for mister vampire lord–stupid “the stronger they are, the more rules they can break” thing! He cringed, shuddered, but then straightened up, though he moved like something was weighing him down.

He turned to smirk at me. “Nice try, little sorceress. But fear not. Once I eliminate this troublesome slayer I will suck you dry, turn you, and feed you blood until your mind returns. You will again know the servitude you crave, and I will have a replacement for my priestesses you so rudely destroyed.”

He turned back to Iason. “Now, human–gah!” He barely dodged out of the way as the blade whistled past him. He tried to strike at Iason, but Iason pivoted and brought the sword around, forcing the vampire to dodge back before the blade struck him.

I sat up while they fought. Brea rushed to my side. “Goddess!” she exclaimed. “Please, whatever you need, I will do it for you.”

I shook my head, then paused. “Actually, there is something you can do for me…”

While we walked, I kept weaving spells around Brea. I remembered the spells Brinksmoor had used on us, and worked with that, layering love onto her desire and trust, devotion onto love, worship onto devotion, submission onto worship. I was making myself Brea’s goddess, all so that I could deliver her to be eaten, utterly helpless to keep myself from doing it.

“Lemma…” she said thickly, stumbling along after me. “I feel… strange…”

“It’s okay,” I reassured her.

“You’re… I remember this feeling. This is what… what Brinksmoor…”

“Yes,” I admitted. While we talked I’d layered a desire to serve onto her submission, and a desire to be glamoured into obedience onto that desire to serve.

“…good…” she said vaguely. “Thank you… Mistress… I promise I’ll be a good girl for you.”

“Goddess,” I corrected. What? As long as I had no choice anyway, why settle for being just a mistress?

“Yes, my goddess,” she said, voice thick with sleepy lust. “Please let me worship you…”

“Soon,” I said. Then I became suddenly aware of how important it was for me to get to Master’s chamber now. “Come on!”

I pulled her along behind me as I ran down the dark corridor, then skidded to a halt as I approached Master’s chamber.

A torch lay on the floor, still burning. By its light I could see Iason fighting both of the twins. As I watched, he swung his sword at one. She caught the blade in her hand, then screamed as her entire arm shriveled, the dark blood magic that kept it alive and mobile sucked out by the iron of his blade.

“Wait here,” I told Brea.

“Yes, goddess,” she murmured.

I ran into the room, concentrated, and launched a small fire spell at Iason, but it splashed against his armor. Damn dragonscale! It wasn’t quite as magic-proof as his sword, but it would still take something big to penetrate it.

I hesitated. Master wanted me to stop him without harming the twins, so I couldn’t blast him with a bigger fire spell. Too much risk of the twins catching it. So what could I do?

I tried creating a blast of wind to knock him off his feet, but he was able to recover even as one of the twins launched herself at him. He spun and ran her through with his sword, but she still struck him full-force even as she shriveled away to dust.

Iason stumbled backwards, and his sword spun away across the floor, toward me.

I had to grab it! Master and the remaining twin couldn’t touch it, but I could, and he wanted that sword. I ran forward, scooped it up in both hands.

Damn, that was heavy. Master wanted… what did he want? Wanted it brought to him. It was so heavy, but I was able to stagger over to him with it in my hands, while Iason wrestled with the surviving twin.

I reached him, but what did he want now? Why… why couldn’t I tell what he wanted? The sword. The sword was absorbing the spell of his eyes!

“Put it down, slave!” he commanded, but it was too late. I brought it up, swung it down toward him…

He blurred with speed, grabbed my wrists. I struggled, but he was impossibly strong; I couldn’t swing the sword the rest of the way down.

He squeezed my wrists painfully. “Drop the sword,” he hissed. His eyes were huge and green, magnetic, and I CANNOT RESIST.

Holding the sword was protecting me from his eyes. “Okay,” I said, and let go.

Brea led us through the tangled streets of the Mercian capital, carrying a torch and several wooden stakes, carved from the protesting innkeeper’s best oak table and stools. Iason had a torch as well, and his iron sword. I didn’t need a torch, since I make my own fire. I didn’t need stakes, either, because I make my own fire.

Being a mage is so cool sometimes!

“I overheard when I was trying to get into the palace,” Brea said. “Two guards were talking–one of them had a friend who was sent to try to sneak into the war goddesses’ temple and never came back.”

“A temple?” said Iason. “Really? Vampires usually shy away from sacred spaces.”

“Still,” I mused, “it kind of makes sense. If they can establish themselves there somehow, their wild magic and the temple’s high magic would cancel out. They’d be almost impossible to detect with magic.”

“Okay,” said Iason, “but how would they have gotten in to begin with?”

“Dunno,” I said. We turned a corner and the temple loomed ahead of us, alone at the end of the street. It looked astoundingly innocuous in the daylight, not at all the kind of place you would find a swarm of bloodthirsty vampires. “I think we’re going to find out.”

Iason turned to Brea. “Thank you for guiding us here. Now go back to the inn.”

“What!?” Brea sputtered. “But–but…” she gestured with the torch and stake she was holding. “I’m going to help!”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said Iason. “It’s not just your own safety–we’re all safer and likelier to succeed if you don’t come in with us.”

“But–” Brea protested again.

“We don’t need you cramping our style, kid,” I told her. Yeah, I know, she’s like three years older than me. It’s just not physically possible to say a sentence like that to someone and not end it by calling them “kid.”

Brea sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you back at the inn.” She turned and ran back the way we’d came.

As we entered the temple, Iason said, “You know she’s going to sneak in after us, right?”

“Yep,” I said.

“She’ll probably get killed.”

I shrugged. “If we get a chance, we’ll try to save her. Otherwise… well, we warned her.”

“Damn. That’s cold even for you.”

“Well, you know, gotta preserve my warmth. Gonna be making a lot of fire in a few minutes.”

“Hello,” said a melodious voice. A tall, beautiful woman stood in front of us, wearing filmy, billowing white robes. She smiled. “Welcome to the Temple of War.”

Or… not?

Iason nudged me. “Look at her eyes,” he whispered.

I did. She was looking straight forward, not focusing on us at all. Her eyes were blank and glazed, pupils so big you almost couldn’t see the thin rim of blue around them.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Some monsters can do that, if you look in their eyes. They get into your mind, bind it to themselves. Dragons are famous for it, but I’ve heard rumors that some vampires can do it, too.” He loosened his sword in his sheath. “But only the really powerful ones.”

That explained how they were able to take the temple–if the lead vampire took her mind but left her human, as a priestess of the temple she’d be able to give permission for them to enter and live here. It also meant they knew we were here.

I readied a fire spell and turned so that Iason and I were back-to-back. The priestess continued smiling blankly at us. I knew that feeling, the warm blissful blankness filling her mind. I wonder if that was how it worked, if the vampire’s eyes danced with color the same way as the lights I’d looked into a couple of days before, pulling her down, relaxing her, the soothing, pretty lights, so complicated, so easy to just let myself fall…

I shoved those thoughts aside and looked around for vampires. “I don’t see anything,” I hissed to Iason.

“Nothing on this side, either,” he answered.

Then the floor dropped out beneath us.

Not the kind of falling I meant!

“You can’t,” said Iason. “Bad enough Lemma’s involved–”

“Hey!” I protested.

“But at least she has magic,” he finished, unfazed. “You’re not trained in dealing with vampires or magic.”

“Everyone knows how to deal with vampires!” Brea retorted. “Garlic, mistletoe, don’t invite them in.”

“That’s how you keep them out,” Iason said gently. “Do you know how to kill them?”

“Uh…” said Brea.

I ticked off on my fingers. “Beheading. Things that disrupt magic, like an oak stake in the heart or iron anywhere. Sunlight, and things that evoke the sun–fire, gold. You have a halberd with a gold blade handy?”

“Well, no,” admitted Brea. “But…”

“Not to mention that they get stronger the more they feed. Your basic corpseling is just a mindless eating machine, but a true vamp is another thing entirely, and as for the nobles… well, I’m glad I’ve never met one.”

“Creatures of chaos,” I explained. “The stronger they get, the more rules they can break.” I shuddered. Chaos magic was icky, fundamentally opposed to the magics of order that my people had mastered. Weird stuff practiced by hedge witches and wielded by monsters, swamp and mountain and forest magic, not the nice clean city magic of gods and demons and, well, me.

“Okay, I get it, you guys are the experts,” Brea said. “But if you know all this, why haven’t you finished them off?”

I sighed.

“We don’t know where the nest is,” Iason explained. “With this many corpselings running around, there has to be at least one master vamp, maybe with a couple of true vamp servitors, somewhere in the city making them all. And we have no idea where they are.”

“Then you do need me,” Brea said firmly.

“Why?” I asked.

She grinned. “I know where to find them.”

“Where?” Iason and I asked in unison, leaning forward.

Brea shook her head. “Not until you promise to bring me along.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to go into danger like this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Brea asked. “I want to be a hero, like you! I want to help save this town!”

I cradled my face in my hands. Of all the… “Look,” I said. “This is isn’t some saga or ballad! Do you know what happens if they kill you?”

“Um… I die?”

“If you’re lucky,” Iason answered. “If it’s a corpseling, or a true vamp just looking to feed. If you’re not lucky, though, you get turned.”

“And that’s it,” I said. “A vampire turns you, your soul is gone. Annihilated. One of only a handful of things that can destroy a soul, and once it’s gone, not even a god can bring it back.”

“But you continue on,” Iason said. “A mindless puppet of your new master, with no drives but obedience and hunger. You’ll kill others, feeding on your blood, getting stronger, smarter. And then one day your mind clicks back on, and you’re a true vamp, able to think like before… but still hungry for blood, still unable to disobey your maker.”

“Of course, Iason and I would kill you long before that happened.”

Brea gulped. “I… I still want to help!” she repeated. “I’m not afraid.”

I sighed. Gods save us from suicidal idiots. Though I suppose if the gods could do that, the world would be a very different, and much better, place.

“Fine,” I said. “It’s your funeral, probably literally.”

“But we’ll go in the morning,” said Iason. “I know better than to try to go into a vampire nest at night. In the meantime, you can help us carve stakes.”

In the inn, Iason and I sat down with a couple of terrible ales and talked shop.

“So many corpselings,” he said. “And still no idea where the nest could be, no sign of their sire.”

“Hey, at least they are all corpselings. You said that means they haven’t been eating, right?”

Iason nodded. “The townsfolk have been smart. Staying inside at night, not inviting anyone into their homes, mistletoe and garlic at all the lintels. Very few have been caught.”

“But still, nearly thirty corpselings. That’s a lot, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Iason sighed. “I’ve never heard of a nest this large. Part of me wants to just get out of here, let someone else deal with it.”

My eyes sparkled with the furor of justice. “We can’t abandon these people in their time of need? What sort of heroes would we be!”

Iason rolled his eyes. “Plus, you think you might have sensed a book here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Plus I sensed a book here. It’s not clear, I can’t quite make sense of it… almost like sometimes there’s a book and sometimes there isn’t. But it’s powerful.”

“Anyway… I kill monsters for money, you hunt books, heroes we ain’t. But… we really can’t just abandon these people in their time of need.”

There was a knock at the door. The entire inn–which wasn’t that many people, just ourselves, the innkeeper and her son, and the three or four drinkers in this neighborhood hardcore enough to go out for a drink when vampires were on the prowl–froze.

A moment later, another knock. Trembling, the innkeeper’s son went to the door. “Who is it?”

“Can I please come in?” said a vaguely familiar, feminine voice. “It’s raining out here!”

The boy looked at the door, then at us. I sighed and stood, a wind spell at the ready–I’d have to blow her back from the door before I set her on fire, at least if I didn’t want the whole in to go up. Beside me, Iason stood, drew his sword, and crouched, ready to spring into the doorway if need be.

The innkeeper’s son gulped, then opened the door a crack before diving sideways.

“I don’t know,” I said in answer to her question. “Can you?”

There was a pause, then the door creaked open slowly. A young woman, shrouded in a hooded traveling cloak which might have been dark green at one time, stepped into the room. A sigh of relief swept through the inn, and everyone relaxed.

The innkeeper’s boy hurriedly closed the door behind the girl. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome, welcome. May I take your cloak?”

Freed of her cloak, the girl shook out a wealth of blonde hair, then paused, staring at me. “Lemma!?” she gasped. “Is that you?”

I waved. “Hey, Brea.”

She squealed and rushed over to our table, nearly knocking me to the floor with a voluminous hug. Momentarily I remembered being in a tangle of bodies with her, our joint servitude of Ma–of Lord… of Brinksmoor. I pushed it aside.

After she was done squealing, jumping up and down, and at one point acknowledging the existence of Iason, she explained: while Castle Brinksmoor and the surrounding lands were doing well under Iola’s leadership, the neighboring holdings were getting uncomfortable at the idea of a realm of women, especially since they’d overthrown the previous ruler. There was even a chance the Kyrnian and Breizhtian militaries might get involved.

So she was here in the capital of Mercia, the most militarily powerful of the Seven Kingdoms, in the hopes of meeting with the King and forming an alliance. “But the palace grounds are sealed up tight,” she complained. “Nobody gets in or out. It’s like they’re under siege.”

“They kind of are,” Iason admitted. “This city turns out to have a bit of a vampire problem.”

Brea covered her mouth in horror. “That’s terrible! No wonder!”

“Yeah,” I said. “And instead of just hitting the market and blowing out of town like I hoped, we’re stuck here dealing with it.”

Brea’s eyes practically glowed. “Of course you are! You’re Lemma, Liberator of Brinksmoor! This is what you do!”

“Eheheh…” I cleared my throat and avoided her eyes. “Er, you see, the thing about that is…”

“And I’m going to help you!” Brea finished.

Oh boy.