Ensanguined

Chapter 4

Col stared upward into blackness. He reached out to see if the lid of the coffin had truly opened, though he knew it to be so. Then it was true, his master had gone missing, kidnapped by a creature with a red smile. Col stiffened and was lifted from the coffin. He alighted gently upon the edge. He stood there, his weight on his arches, listening to the thousands of demons whispering across the room. They didn’t seem to notice him.

Loud, angry voices rose from the lower level. He stepped down from the lip of the coffin and grabbed his jacket before closing the lid. He ran his hand over his stomach to find the tears in his shirt and skin had mended.

A restful day had left him refreshed. He felt more than able to tackle an army of Vampires to find his master. He grinned and reminded himself that he knew nothing of the kidnapper- that this would be a challenge.

“Here goes...” he said aloud and opened his door to leave. He flexed his muscles experimentally. His shirt bulged from the rapid increase of mass, then quickly reformed to accommodate it.

“G’night, Ma,” he said, winking at the far shelf, then closed his door. The voices below were louder now; a man and a woman screaming at one another. Col climbed down and stood silently in the archway. His four, bulky Guardian Ghouls were sitting around the television, where their weak minds were distracted from the voracious hunger that consumed them. Like Col, a good day's rest was sufficient to heal their wounds, no matter how dire, so long as their master remained alive.

The angry voices had come from the TV: A nicely dressed couple stared at one another with flushed faces. In the corner and out of focus was a small child curled tightly into a ball, his hands covering his face, both wet with tears. Without warning the man reached back and struck the woman. The four ghouls sitting around the television moaned in satisfaction. None yet noticed Col’s arrival.

The four ghouls turned their desiccated faces toward him when he stepped through the archway. Six eyes stared into his for a span of time without blinking, then turned back to the television. One of the Ghouls stood slowly and locked his eye again on Col. It stumbled to him, cupped its hands togethet, then vomited into them a white ID card. Col gingerly took this from him the ghoul nodded in appreciation.

The card was sticky and pockmarked with disintegration. Col could not make out the name of the card’s owner, nor did he recognize the face, but the company title ‘Liquid Pharmaceuticals Utd’ across the top would work as a clue. Satisfied, the ghoul returned to his place on the floor.

“Keep your eyes peeled tonight, gentlemen,” said Col to them, as he headed for the door. The short walkway echoed with the sound of a squad car screeching on gravel coming from the TV. Angry words were exchanged followed by gunfire. A chorus of grunts followed him out of the door like hoarse laughter in the deep of night from a dark closet.

---

Danil cursed and pushed himself away from his computer. The monitor displayed a medieval city in ruins, once carefully constructed storehouses, homes, and barracks were now heaps of flaming wreckage surrounded by armor clad knights with blue plumage. In the center of it all was a castle of sturdy granite, flying green flags from a triad of towers. Presently a duo of spear-wielding dragon riders exchanged blows above the castle as catapults and heavy wooden rams rolled in to siege the castle’s high walls. Danil winced and rose from his chair.

Conir shot Danil a grin over his own monitor. His army had completely wiped Danil's from the game-map. He decided to focus on destroing the city around the castle so that he could cripple Danil’s empire beyond recovery. Suddenly, red blips appeared on the game's overhead map. The blips were coming from Conir’s own castle and its surrounding territories.

Yasha had taken advantage of the struggle between Conir and Danil to advance her empire’s technology far beyond their own. Her worker drones had finished building a mobile fortress and she now had over one-hundred troops including sss warriors, Griffin Riders, and a number of slow moving Battle Zeppelins. Accompanying this force were a dozen high-sailed ships that bristled with cannons and keen-eyed Corsairs.

Yasha’s Amazons hid on the outskirts of Conir’s territory. His preoccupation with destroying Danil’s empire had made him too busy to scout the areas around his castle. Yasha stationed the Zeppelins on the opposite side of the castle and commanded the griffin riders to protect them in case of attack. Finally, she sailed the ships down from their northern docks to a beach on the outskirts of a small town, then ordered them to commence bombardment.

Danil checked the refrigerator for beer and frowned at an empty case of Lucky Clovers. He shoved his hands into his pockets and strode from the kitchen, back into the living room. A passing glance at the large, ornate mirror on the wall next to the television showed him a pale, unshaved face, the stubble on his scalp matching that on his chin. His cheeks and forehead were the field of a disastrous battle with acne. Danil gave himself a grin; He had never seen anything more beautiful.

Just before Danil had taken a seat on the black leather couch, there was a knock on the door. Danil glanced over at the others. They were focused intently at the game. Danil could only see a sliver of his own screen - which now displayed the word ‘Defeated’ in bold red letters - and bits of Conir’s that were not obscured by his bulky frame. A wide wet triangle of sweat slowly expanded down the back of his blue shirt.

Danil smirked as he stood and crossed the tan carpet to the entryway. He peered through the peephole and caught a fish-eyed image of a case of Lucky-Clover Beer.

“Col!” shouted Danil, more excited about the beer than his guest. A muffled thump came from the living room, and before Danil had wrenched open the door, Yasha pushed him into the open coat closet and greeted Col with a frown.

“Where have you been?” She asked jokingly, letting him hear her russian accent so that he would know she meant business. “No calls, no perfumed letters, no bouquets of vermilion roses with forget-me-not cards.” She stepped towards Col and sniffed the air around him. She shot him an even angrier look, and he grinned sheepishly in return. “You have been with that girl again! Truly, Col, I don’t know what you see in that silly woman.”

Yasha read something from Col’s brown eyes. Ordinarily he was quick on the draw with a million joking excuses to how he loved her and was sorry for his ‘infidelities’; Something was wrong. Yasha pulled her frown lower and harrumphed. She then turned and stomped back to her computer.

“Hey Col, how’s the night life?” asked the muffled voice of Danil as he pulled himself from the coat closet. “Oh, hey, lemmie help with those.” Col handed him two cases of Lucky Clovers and followed him inside.

Danil sat himself on the couch and tore open the first case of beer. “You’re a sight for sore eyes man. We were running dry. I was about to have to drink some water,” he said, savoring the sharp bitter bite of the green-tinted Irish beer. He rested the other case on the edge of the coffee table. Col chose one of the three soft recliners that formed a loose wedge around the short end of the table.

Conir chanced a look away from the battle being displayed in cartoonish realism on his monitor. “Col! It’s been awhile, Cruiser. You’re just in time to watch me purge my ram with Ma Babushka here,” he said through a mischievous grin. Conir looked around the room and raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Where is the Master?” He asked with a steady tone.

Danil, Yasha, and Conir were all Serfs- humans tied to a vampire through a simple blood pact. Each sported a glyph of the Master’s name on their back between the shoulder blades that served as a tiny focus point of their own soul’s energies, and merged their life force with his.

Col had hoped the three would be slightly drunk before they realized the Master’s absence. He wondered if they had the same lost, anxious feeling as he did. He motioned for Danil to toss him a beer. Conir turned back to his screen with a flick of his short ponytail.

“The Master is gone,” said Col finally, halfway through the beer.

“f**k,” cursed Conir. He spun away from the computer and stared into Col’s eyes. Col shifted his gaze to Danil and Yasha who stared back with frightened faces.

“What-” asked Danil.

“Do you mean?” finished Yasha.

Col finished the beer in two gulps. “I was attacked by a Lunger Ghoul last night, right after some creature made it perfectly clear that he had the Master in his side-seat. He sent me some sort of illusionary vision and by the time my mind had cleared, he was gone. I rushed home to find the Guardian ghouls in pieces all over the house. A Vamp waited for me in my room, but I parted him from his heart.”

“He can't be dead,” said Danil.

“No, he can’t,” answered Col. “My power has not dwindled or diminished. I can still sense his life force, however faint.” This was true, as every time he thought of the Master he felt reassured of his existence; a feeling that would not have lingered if his master had gone the way of the damned into the arduous abyss.

“So can I,” replied Conir. “Neither have I been freed from the, heh, ‘Curse’ of Ages.” He referred to the Soul Binding’s tendency to extend a Serf’s lifespan far beyond that which was natural. “I’ve not changed in forty years, it’s, what forty-three for you cuz?” Danil nodded.

The room was silent for a span as the Serfs each brooded their own troubled thoughts. Conir and Yasha rose from their seats and sat around the coffee table, Yasha in the recliner right next to Col, Conir on the armrest at the other end of the couch. They both accepted a Lucky Clover from Danil, sipping a bit before Conir spoke.

“Do you,” he began and took another sip for confidence, “know his secret?”

Col shook his head. He knew him only as Master or Lord.

Conir calmed himself and wiped all traces of worry from his face. Yasha’s horrified expression deepened.

“So why are you here,” asked Yasha. “Shouldn’t you be out trying to find the Master?” She glanced sidelong into the mirror behind Danil. Her smooth pale face had not seen detriment in forty-five years. She tried to disregard the memories of her mother from whom she gained her looks; Her mother who had become old and wrinkled, her dark-blond hair thin and wispy from age. Even her mother’s eyes had seemed to fade in her waning years, the once teal irises becoming a thin, red-tinged sea foam hue. Yasha closed her eyes to her own reflection.

“He needs our help,” said Danil. All eyes shifted to Danil. “Yep; we need his powers, he needs ours. Don’t you lowlies 'member? The Master, he came here two days ago and gave us these tekked-out riggs, said we’d need ‘em- soon.” He waved a hand at the three computers. Conir’s screen was identical to Danil’s; the word ‘Defeated’ was ignominious, seeming to focus the dread air in the room.

“Yea, I remember,” said Conir. “You must excuse us, Col, but while you have the luxury of the fear of diminishing, we have the dread of thirty or so years of aging crashing down on us all at once if we are left without a master for too long. Then we will be simple humans again, or maybe dead from the strain of the transition.”

 “But how could the Master have known to warn us? And if he did know, why didn’t he just come out and say it? Maybe we could have helped him, or escaped,” reasoned Danil, rubbing his fuzzy scalp in concentration.

“Could he have known?” asked Yasha. All eyes focused again on Col.

Col realized the question was for him soon enough. “The Master had dealings with various entities and beings. The Mages and the Lopers for sure; hell I myself did favors for them at his request.”

“The Lopers? s**t man I thought you all hated each other from birth,” said Danil.

“Times have changed, and so have prejudices. The Lopers- I think- are willing to overlook the horrors of the Antediluvian Vampires; Well, some of them.” Col shook his head. “Men may be getting weaker but their devices sure aren’t, and they now outnumber us all. It is the human's numbers combined with their cleverness that makes them a very dangerous foe indeed; Dangerous enough to warrant certain amounts of diplomacy.”

“But the Lopers work with the humans against the Vampires don’t they?” Asked Yasha.

“Yes, but they aren’t too keen about being controlled by humans neither. They make their own decisions; this one, I’m sure, is largely based on what they stand to lose from unnecessary aggression,” answered Col, then continued; “That being just about everything in Wolfhelm, every man, woman and child in with the Shifter’s blood would have been crushed by the Master. He’s an all or nothing kind of guy, which would mean ‘Join or Die’ in this situation.”

“That’s pretty f****d up,” answered Conir. Col shrugged. “But I think we’re way off subject. The chat should now, I think, be focused on our future and not those flea-bitten moon-bound creatures.

“So what if the Master somehow knew this would happen, what’s that tell us?”

“Either he was very worried about our survival, Col’s included, or he was confident,” answered Danil.

“Very true, cuz,” replied Conir. “He would just as well sacrifice himself to keep us from being involved. But a warning, ‘specially one like that, doesn’t sound like sacrifice. More like confidence.”

“Maybe you’re right,” replied Col. “The only struggle seems to have come from the ghouls. If the Master had the foresight to warn you, then he knew what was coming, which would mean he probably went without a fight. Maybe this is like the time he got lost in the dump and I had to fight off all those Rat-grots. He told me later that he simply didn’t feel like fighting.”

Danil thought a moment. “Ok, so maybe this is all just the Master being too lazy and confident to save himself; so he figures he’ll give us a bash at it. Kinda prickish of him to make us worry about him, and thus our own survival, but I guess if he’s confident I can’t complain.”

“Or maybe whoever kidnapped him took him with minimal struggle, and didn’t even bother with the ghouls. He probably left them to the Vampire that was supposed to kill Col,” said Yasha.

“Ever the optimist,” said Danil. “Tell me, then, in this situation are we half-f****d or not-so-boned?”

“What is true is true. We must be prepared for the worst. This isn’t going to get any easier if we ignore the details. I believe that whether the glass is full or empty, you should be thankful that you can drink and mindful of where it can be replenished,” replied Yasha.

“So then what do we do if all else fails? The idea of suddenly shifting from a twentyish-year-old man to an old moaner in his sixties is less appealing to me than outright death.” Danil’s words were beginning to slur slightly after his fifth beer.

“What if Col rebinds us?” asked Yasha. “Then we can at least have the assurance that if he can but survive, so can we.”

Col shook his head solemnly. “I have to be stronger than the Master to overcome his seal. Either that or I wait ‘till he is no more then bind you all to me. But I can't expect to defeat what the Master could not.”

“It seems to me that we have no room for doubts, Col, So if you’re gonna talk like that I’ll just hurl myself off the roof now,” said Danil. “Do you remember those renegade mages? You sent them packin before they could even gather the air in their skirts. And the Rat-grots, I don’t think old Suerfyur will ever forget you, seeing as though he probably has to wear an old piece of cheese as a foot.”

Col nodded, thinking of the problems of the past he had so easily overcome. ‘But then again,‘ he thought, ‘none of them had come to us, or even set foot in my house. Hell, most of them hardly even concerned the Master.’

“True, Danil. Thanks for the encouragement,” said Col, allowing himself a weak but genuine smile. “Though I must say, the Mages were young and inexperienced, and Rat’ties are not exactly the hardest things to deal with, regardless of how stubbornly ornery their leader is.

“In any case, there is not much time and I still have yet to find the Master, which as Danil pointed out is why I came. I need you to find out everything that has anything to do with this.” He reached into his trench coat and pulled forth the acid etched badge the ghoul had given him. He played with it a bit, flipping it between his fingers, finally holding it between middle and main and handing it to Yasha.

“What’s this? Looks like someone’s been using this as a teething ring,” she said as she took the badge and held it gingerly around the edges.

“Well, one of the Ghouls, umm… Frons I believe, held it somehow in his stomach overnight.”

Yasha retched and flung the card into Conir’s lap. “That’s real nice, Col, you could've warned me.” She said dryly. Col simply chuckled and stood.

“I’ll also need you to feed the ghouls, they are more than likely worn and weakened from being reanimated without the Master's help. I must be positive I have a safe place to bring the Master back to. You know where to go right?”

“Up near the Norths, Sunset cemetery, tell ‘em Draz sent us…” began Conir monotonously then in a sudden outburst he added, “Hey! Maybe that’s part of the Master’s name!”

“Doubtful. The Master is too smart to let a clue like that slip to a mortal or whatever ol’ Ornerter the mortician is. There’s so many creatures in Theyeark, I’ve long since lost track of who is what,” discouraged Col.

 The serfs fell silent again, each trying to break the Master’s secret. If they could but speak his name aloud they would become Vampires themselves, and rule their own destinies. Until then, their fates were as good as their Master’s, and presently his fate seemed darker than the night he so reveled in.

Col turned to leave, preparing to offer his farewells from the door. Conir’s voice came from behind as Col drunkenly rounded the recliner and made for the entryway. “What about you?” asked Conir. “What did the Master say to you? Did he give you any sort of warning?”

“He told me, as he always tells me, ‘Stay well fed, Col.’” He shrugged. “So that’s what I intend to do. I’ll be back after I’ve gorged myself silly, and then I shall find my Lord. You should probably wait 'till I return to see Ornerter.”

By the time Col had reached the door he was completely sober. He cheered silently the Vampiric strength he had over his own flesh. With one hand on the knob he prepared to leave, but something had him by the other.

“Col, if anything should happen I want you to have this,” said Yasha softly. Yasha pressed her lips against his. “Promise… promise you’ll come back for us… for me.”

“No sweat,” said Col, tasting something salty. He left quickly and went up the lonely elevator to his apartment on the floor above the Serf’s. He rode the elevator to the ground in silence, keeping his motorcycle aright by the handle bars. He could still taste Yasha’s tears, so wiped his mouth angrily with the back of his hand and headed to Kandais’s home, for dinner.