++’Never send a thrall to do a job that matters’, a common saying about vampires, though one they rarely manage to live by.++

  Book 2: Chapter 38

  Anne was insane. She didn’t feel insane, hadn’t ever been told by anyone else that she was insane, but nonetheless she knew, however it may have seemed to both her and others, that she was insane. Anne knew this because of what she was doing right now. Anne knew this because she knew she was currently creeping towards the deadliest location within several miles of her. She was doing this voluntarily, knowing full well what risk awaited her there and that a single glance at it had rendered several dozen humans almost non-verbally frightened. This was not a situation that sane women found themselves in, and so she knew, through basic reasoning, that she was insane.

  And if that hadn’t been enough, Anne had another piece of extra damning evidence. Reginald had thought it was a good idea, appeared downright enthusiastic in fact. Anne had ended up finding no fault in his logic, and letting herself be persuaded by it.

  That really wasn’t the way a sane woman behaved around the craziest man in her entire region. The more she looked at the evidence and pieced it together, the more inescapable Anne’s conclusion became.

  She was fucking insane.

  But being insane didn’t really make much difference here, because what mattered was that she had a thing that needed doing and no choice but to do it. Or did she? If Anne was insane, she wouldn’t exactly know what needed doing, right?

  No, wrong. Reginald was nuttier than squirrel shit, but that didn’t mean his judgement was off. Other people thought it was, because other people were stupid, but Anne had always known when his crazy ended and when the smart began. And there was a lot of smart, more than the crazy in fact.

  Damnit. If Reginald thought this was a good idea, and Anne agreed, then it probably was. Those were the two smartest people she knew.

  The mine’s entrance was like a gaping mouth, all it needed was the teeth. Anne could see maybe five paces into it, after that everything became a wall of blackness. She’d brought a torch, at least. But she hadn’t lit it yet. Torches put out light, but they made you a lot easier to see from the dark than they did the things in the dark for you.

  That was what Reginald had told her, at least. Anne had irritably suggested that maybe the person whose eyes could already see in the dark should head in instead, but that didn’t make him wrong. Other than that, her only other nod to caution was a pistol.

  Some good that would do. Anne had seen vampires take bullets before. Ludvich didn’t mind them much, ignoring the wounds they caused and powering through like…well, like he was already dead. Reginald was worse. Gunshots affected him less than thrown rocks did her. If whatever awaited her in the mine was even halfway Reginald’s equal, she’d be dead before laying eyes on it.

  And he knew it. She knew it. But here she was, because her life was a worthwhile risk in exchange for a few more hours to prepare Norvhan’s defence. Anne gathered up all the courage in her body and started for the mine’s entrance.

  The torch threw orange light right ahead of her. Anne knew to hold it just off to one side, and keep from looking anywhere near the flame. If it was between herself and what she tried to see, she’d see nothing but fire. And one glance at the glare would ruin her night-vision. She needed to see.

  An old trick Anne’s mother had taught her came to mind, and she closed her eyes. Held them shut as she waited just by the entrance, counted. One to ten, waiting. It was agony, every moment riddled with certainty that she’d be attacked in her blindness. Then she hit ten and opened her eyes, looked into the gloom.

  It was brighter. Was it brighter? It seemed brighter, a shade maybe. The torch did most of the work, still.

  She ventured deep. All around, Anne heard her own footsteps racing ahead of her. The ground was solid stone of a depth that would surely turn away cannon fire, yet every stride brought with it a new clap of sound rushing along its walls. With how strong the echoes were, Anne could only imagine that firing her pistol in these conditions would lead to both her eardrums giving way instantly.

  More echoes, more darkness. If Anne saw nothing for much longer, she’d turn and leave. There was justification for a risk now, it was why she was here, but going much deeper would be tantamount to suicide. Already she was unable to see more than ten paces ahead of her, and that for the torchlight. If something erupted from the shadows with Reginald’s Speed, it would be halfway onto her before she even reacted.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I can still turn back, now. Run away. She could, and in a few more moments she would. As the cave darkened more and her escape became riskier by the second, she headed deeper all the same. Anne would not throw away her chance to widen Norvhan’s odds, not to win herself a little bit more life.

  A dozen more paces, I’ll just take a dozen more paces. By now her body felt like it was on fire. It was a familiar sort of energy that Anne had become a lot more used to in recent days. Like someone had poured lamp oil into her veins and lit it up, and she knew it was the feeling of her body acknowledging danger and getting ready to face it. Right at that moment, she felt like she could’ve run a mile in five minutes.

  Right then, she felt like she’d be meeting something that could jog a mile in one.

  “Your focus is slipping,” came a voice from behind her. Anne didn’t react with anything resembling dignity. As soon as she realised what it meant, that it was between her and the exit already, she whirled, screamed and swung her torch for its head. A hand came up and caught the improvised weapon, caught it right by the burning head. She waited to smell cooked flesh, but instead saw only an implacable face held still and expressionless, as if the feeling of fire on skin was no feeling at all.

  Anne let the torch go and stepped back, but the stranger seemed to follow her without the slightest effort. It was like she wasn’t moving, her frantic backsteps stalemated by his casual lopes forwards. The man, because it was definitely a man, looked like a dead thing, skin taut across his features, eyes dead in their sockets, lips thin, peeled back to show too-white teeth.

  Fangs were among those teeth. This was a vampire, then. Anne felt suddenly calm as she realised that, and did some quick thinking. It was impossibly thin and near-death, staring at her with unmasked hunger, licking cold lips with a forked tongue.

  Hungry. She knew her odds of survival didn’t exist, and she’d seen enough of this thing in motion to know her odds of somehow hurting it were lower. So Anne did all she could.

  “Take one more step, and I’ll blow my brains out right in front of you,” she spat, aiming the pistol at her own temple and trying to keep the tremble from her voice. The vampire stared Anne down, head tilting, eyes narrowing.

  “You would threaten me with your own suicide?” Its voice was long and grating, like a saw being dragged across stone. It made her shiver, made her eyes water, made her guts churn and tumble like nails on a chalkboard. But it was only a voice, the thing wasn’t moving for her.

  Yet.

  “You’ve just woken up, right?” she asked, thinking fast and talking faster. “I’ll bet you’re the reason this place actually collapsed a few decades ago. Old, abandoned mine in another Vampire Baron’s territory, you were hurt or tired, needed somewhere to sleep and regain your strength, and you thought there was nowhere more perfect than this. Nobody would question when it caved in, nobody would bother to dig it back up, and you’d be as safe as you could be knowing that anything likely to kill a vampire would have to start with the one ruling the land you were hiding in.”

  The vampire didn’t even look eager to come forwards, now. It just hung where it was, staring at her. Studying her. Anne was thinking faster and clearer than she had in her entire life put together, brain churning away like it was supercharged. Had she pissed herself? She couldn’t tell, too busy thinking.

  “You’re hungry, too. Really hungry. Your kind always are after a long nap,” she’d heard that much about Reginald. “I mean shit, just looking at you…you look starved enough that a human would already be dead. I don’t doubt you can kill me, but people know I’m here. What do you fancy your odds will be if Krieg, the Vampire Baron in this town, catches you in this state?”

  “I will drain your corpse,” the vampire hissed. Anne sneered.

  “Which is why I’m still alive, right? Because of how many options you have. Don’t treat me like an idiot. Dead blood is no good for your kind, well I’m about to turn myself into a sack of dead blood.”

  Again, the vampire remained still for a moment. A long one, and then several more, all even longer, just staring at her in thought. When it finally spoke, a chill ran down her spine more deeply than if it had eaten a fucking baby right in front of her.

  “You are an interesting find.” He was walking towards her now, and suddenly the time had come for Anne to make her decision. He was calling her bluff. Was it a bluff? He’d be on her in another second, when that happened it didn’t matter if she was bluffing or not because he’d just take the gun from her. No threat, no incentive for him to talk, no delay. She needed to do it, then. There was no escaping this alive, so all she had left for herself was spite, was suicide so that when he started drinking her blood it would be from an already-dead body.

  Anne closed her eyes and tightened her finger. Nothing, the trigger stayed put. She blinked open and stared down the barrel right for where she was pulling down, saw the metal quivering under her grip, but felt it stuck. Was it lodged, somehow? Held still by…

  She turned back to the vampire, and saw the rotting corpse of a smile spread across its desiccated features.

  He was holding the trigger in place, somehow. Not touching it, not even looking at it, but he was keeping her from pulling it and keeping her from escaping him as her last act. He’d been able to do this from the start.

  So just toying with her, then. She’d never had a chance.

  The vampire took Anne’s pistol with one, almost delicate hand before tossing it to the side. The creature didn’t spare it even a glance, apparently having eyes only for her.

  “You interest me,” it said. “And so you will live for the time being. It is night outside?”

  “Yes,” Anne told him instantly. The vampire smiled, its mouth looking exactly like a bloodless axe-wound.

  “It is day,” it replied. “Or else I would be faced with one of my own kind upon awakening, given that the vampires of this domain clearly think something here is worth securing. Take me to the ones who sent you.”

  She didn’t want to obey, and tried with all of her might not to. But it wasn’t Anne’s mind the vampire had been talking to, and her body did as instructed without delay.

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