Black Blood - 17. Chapter 17

17

Another twelve hours of fast paced walking awaited them, interrupted by scarce and brief resting sessions during which Skylar lit a fire and they roasted small animals Kalan had hunted down with his bow. Micah, stubborn vegetarian, stuck to the cereal bars and fruits Skylar had packed. Viko didn’t eat—certainly not because of vegetarianism, but because he was too messed up inside. Skylar could feel it. She could also feel Micah’s worry for him. Their emotions were too intense; she wished they would think more quietly. She could barely keep them out of her mind even when she tried to.

Despite packing several bottles of water Skylar ran out, but Kalan told her not to worry. Using the clay bowls, he used his magic to convert the humidity in the surrounding air to actual drinking water. It started with beads of water gathering at the edges of the bowls, before slowly sliding in and accumulating there. Soon they had full bowls of water so they could rehydrate themselves. At least, Micah convinced Viko to drink some. Kalan sure was a useful person to have around during an unexpected adventure in the wilderness.

The path they followed through the forest had marks of foot prints crisscrossing it. But eventually they stopped. It was night fall again, and something very strange happened.

All around, the earth seemed to be moving. It wasn’t an earthquake though, more like a slight tremble with sounds of crawling and rattling, like nails clawing at the ground. Skylar’s gaze darted to Viko, because she could feel his heart pounding in apprehension. Saying that he had a bad feeling about this would have been an understatement.

As moonlight spilled through the thick leaves of the trees above, hushed voices were heard in the distance. There was movement in the forest, rustling the foliage. Airi summoned a white two bladed sword that glowed faintly in the dimness. The rustling surrounding them seemed to stop for a moment. Holding his breath, Kalan wielded his bow, selecting an arrow from his quiver.

Soon shadows became visible, skirting the circle of feeble light cast by Airi’s weapon, zigzagging around trees. There were so many of them, Skylar now realized. At first it had seemed like there were only a few, but now more were gathering. There were still noises of clawing and crawling in the distance. As she saw a mound of earth trembling to her left, just beyond the trampled path they stood on, she realized with a start that these people were coming out of the earth, like corpses digging out of their graves. Now her heart raced as fast as Viko’s. Micah was so pale he looked like he was about to pass out.

Kalan stood close to Skylar protectively, very gentlemanly so. In different circumstances, she might have made fun of him. Only Mayrin and Airi were impassive, standing their ground, waiting for what was coming. Skylar wasn’t keeping her cool, though. The fact that she was really tired wasn’t helping. This scene felt like something out of a terribly realistic horror movie, or a vivid nightmare. They were being surrounded.

These people had been turned into vampires, clearly. Their fangs were bared, and they were thirsty—so thirsty. Skylar could feel it now, and fear gripped at her heart like a cold fist. She stepped a little closer to the others instinctively. They were completely circled, and it was getting worst. More were clawing out of the earth and gathering around. Some of them were speaking in hushed, hopeful voices, positive that they would get to eat dinner soon. Others were just growling lowly, not even bothering with words. Skylar felt the danger, so poignantly that her already tired legs got wobbly. Her instinct was to run; there were hundreds of them, so their little group would surely lose. Quantity often trumped quality, even when magic was involved. And if these people had been anything like the fierce, strong and skilled warrior Viko was, according to what Micah had told her, well they would be nearly impossible to kill as vampires. Every single one of them could be as difficult to defeat as Jacy had been. The thought alone knotted her stomach.

Glancing over at Airi and his double sided sword, Skylar decided to imitate him and summon her weapon. Her sword only had one blade, not two like his, but that was okay. She had trouble enough wielding it as it was. The fear really did make her magic uncontrollably stronger, though. The ghoulish hilt appeared in her hand, as well as the long pointy blade, but this time bluish flames licked at it in a regular motion. It was like something out of a video game. Skylar was the one who had created it, and even she was fascinated by it. Emanating warmth, the blade glowed with power and a few vampires nearby backed off in fear.

Skylar studied their appearances. Their tan clothes were ripped, their livid skin covered with dirt, their dark hair lanky, and their snarls menacing. They didn’t look like people anymore. Getting over their fear of Skylar’s fiery sword—they couldn’t see it, she assumed, but they could feel its heat—they started crawling closer again, overwhelmed with their thirst for blood. They were like a pack of ravenous wolves, too famished to back out. But then Viko stepped forward in the light, in front of Skylar and Airi. His eyebrows were drawn together in a scowl, his stance unwavering. The dark circles under his eyes didn’t seem to matter; he seemed fully awake.

Listening to the dim roar of hushed voices, Skylar thought she heard some of them recognizing Viko. They were speaking in another language, but if she could just see who was uttering the words, she could probably decipher it using her perception.

One of them stepped forward to face Viko. Airi brandished his sword, but Viko thrusted a hand out toward him to stop his movements with authority. Slowly, Viko’s yellow eyes darted to the man facing him. He was more a boy than a man, really, but a vampire nevertheless. He reminded Skylar of Viko in some ways; he had the same angular features and lean frame, only he was a few inches shorter and he had shorter hair and much darker eyes, so dark his pupils weren’t discernible. He wore tan pants that looked like bandages wrapped around his legs, and a shirt so dirtied with earth that it looked black.

His dark eyes flashed blue in the light of Skylar’s blade, reflecting the supernatural flame. She concentrated and felt what he was thinking so she could understand the unknown language. “Brother,” he snarled, “you have nice timing. I see you’ve brought us some food. We were just getting hungry.”

Skylar felt Micah shuddering behind her. She whirled and saw that some vampires with hollow cheeks and pointy canines had advanced toward him. She brandished her sword higher and they backed off a bit. She took Micah’s hand and pulled him close.

Viko spoke in the same language as his brother. It was a rough and sharp language, which sounded almost like it was painful for the tongue to speak. “What have you done, Liham?” Viko gestured with a shaky hand. “You’ve turned everyone into such a creature? I can see some of the children present here. Do you even know what that means? You’ve doomed our entire clan.”

“What are they saying?” asked Micah, whispering. “I know you understand.”

“Shh, I’ll tell you later.” She couldn’t concentrate and translate at the same time.

Next to them, Kalan and Airi were clenching their respective bow and sword, stomping the ground with their boots as they kept turning to keep the vampires in check at every angle.

Liham frowned, lips thinning. “Doomed? What are you talking about? No one respected us. No one cared. You and some other lunatics still believed that we had a chance to make it in this world, but the rest of us had given up.” He spread out his thin arms. “Now we have power, immortality, speed, strength. We can fight. We can be feared and respected, finally, we can—”

“Are you a fool?” shouted Viko, his face white with rage. The mask of indifference was long gone. “You have to crawl under the earth during the day. You have to drink blood to survive. Look at yourselves! You’re like shadows of your old selves; you’re like ghosts. No wonder the dragons turned against you.”

Some of them flinched, but most of them didn’t seem to care. Skylar’s eyes narrowed as she intensified the magical glow of her sword; seeing the expressions on their faces helped her decode the words.

“It was fun for a while,” Liham scoffed, “when you led us to battle, riding the biggest dragon in the world, making us believe, if only for a fleeting moment, that we could overcome anything. But deep down we all knew it couldn’t last. Townsfolk hate us more than ever before. They just wanted to slay us all along with our dragons at this point. What were we supposed to do? The dragons are almost extinct, anyway.”

“No thanks to you!” Viko yelled and a vast silence reigned. “You killed Fraya, I know you did. And I saw the dead dragons back at the camp. What were you thinking, all of you?” His blazing eyes washed over the swarms of vampires circling them. “That was going against everything our people have always stood for.”

“It was them who attacked us,” a voice shouted from the crowd almost timidly.

“Because you chose to become bloodthirsty monsters,” Viko snapped, taking a small step forward and looking to see where that voice had come from. But the people were huddled together like a flock of sheep.

Liham intervened. “I didn’t kill your dragon, Viko. But I was there. I saw it happen, and I didn’t stop it.” He gave a humorless laugh. “It was Charisma, you miserable idiot. Fraya attacked her, and Charisma produced some sort of invisible weapon out of nowhere and drove it through your dragon’s heart, twice. She knew I had witnessed it. She offered me power and immortality, and I said yes. She told me to share that power with as many as I could, and I did because we deserve it. We’ve always been weak, and chased after. Now we’ll be the ones chasing the townspeople and killing them.”

Viko had paled. For once he had no words.

“Is he okay?” Micah whispered, leaning closer to Skylar. “What did the other one say? Is he his brother?”

“Yeah,” Skylar said quietly. “He said Charisma’s the one who killed his dragon.”

Micah swallowed hard, and looked at Viko’s back. Skylar shot a glance toward Mayrin, just to see what she was up to, but her face was impassive, framed by silvery hair that didn’t seem dirty at all even though they had been out in the wilderness for a little more than twenty four hours now. She hadn’t even summoned anything. She just stood by Airi’s side calmly, like there wasn’t an army of zombie-like creatures waiting to make them their late night snack.

“If you don’t want to join us,” Liham said, “then we’ll kill you with your friends.” He stepped closer then, his face mere inches from Viko’s. Skylar flinched, itching to ward him off with her weapon, but she didn’t—not yet. “You know,” he added quietly so the other vampires wouldn’t hear him, with seething hatred beneath his tone, “when I made a deal with Charisma, I was the one who asked her to take you away as a little bonus.”

Reminding Skylar of a wounded animal, Viko let out a desperate growl and clasped his hands around Liham’s neck, strangling him. But Liham, having Charisma’s tainted blood in his veins, was much stronger. He grabbed one of Viko’s arms and pulled it effortlessly, before biting away at it, tearing at the skin savagely. Viko yelped and pushed him away with all of his strength, which was barely enough. Skylar wanted to help him, but there was no time. The other vampires had taken this as a signal to launch at them. So she whirled and protected Micah instead, slicing the air with her fiery blade so the vampires would stay away. The tremendous heat of the flames frightened them. They could hear it sweeping the air, heavy and sharp.

Wielding his own weapon a few steps away from her, Airi was being much more effective. He slaughtered vampire after vampire, moving so fast that they couldn’t see him coming much more than they could see the weapon invisible to their magic deprived eyes. Kalan unleashed his arrows with impressive aim and movements quick as a flash. Even though they were attacking efficiently, most of those blows wouldn’t kill the vampires. Skylar didn’t want to use her fire though, not if she could help it. In the forest and with that many opponents, it would be irrepressible. She could already see it spreading and becoming wildfire.

She was starting to think that she didn’t have a choice though, as the vampires closed in on them, lips snarled back to reveal their threatening fangs. Liham had pushed Viko face first onto the ground and he was twisting his bitten arm behind his back, tugging at his hair so he could bite away at his neck. Micah had flung himself at Liham before anyone could stop him. But Micah seemed to merely annoy Liham; the way a fly did when it rested briefly on someone’s arm. Liham just elbowed him in the chest, propelling him against a tree, before looking down at his prey again. Skylar’s sword couldn’t save her anymore. Vampires were circling her and getting ready to jump any second, staring at her like she was a slice of meat with their haggard eyes. And no matter how gentlemanly Kalan was, his arrows just weren’t enough. This was a nightmare, Skylar thought as dread curdled in the pit of her stomach. It had to be.

And then a light glowed from the sky, making everyone look up. It was so intense and sudden in the dark that it hurt Skylar’s eyes a bit. For the vampires it was much worst; they threw themselves on the ground, clawing at the earth to try to find shelter. When Skylar’s eyes got used to the light, she realized that it was Mayrin casting it from her hands, high up in the sky, silvery wings spread out so that she looked like an angel.

“What is she doing?” Skylar asked in fascination, unbothered by the shrieks of the hundreds of vampires throughout the forest, trying to hide from the light. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s a type of summon I’ve seen only her do,” Airi said with a fond smile. He didn’t even look tired after fending off all those creatures, blonde hair merely windblown, like he fought bloodthirsty armies every other week. Maybe he did. “She is summoning a light so bright you could say it is an imitation of the sun.”

A pale golden glow indeed washed over the forest, just like it was daylight again. Their skin red and blistered, the vampires were hiding in the ground, or simply running away, hoping that the light would fade with the distance they put between themselves and that thing in the sky.

“I thought only magical beings could see summons though.”

“When it’s this strong,” Airi said simply, “that rule doesn’t apply. Mayrin’s light can hurt them.”

Skylar looked down, and she realized Liham had gone with the rest. Micah had recovered from that blow to his chest, and he was trying to help Viko to his feet. Weakened, Viko had to lean some of his weight against Micah so he could stand. Skylar frowned.

“We should run while Mayrin is holding this light for us. But can you…?”

Still panting, Viko pulled himself away from Micah slowly. His neck was bleeding.

“I can,” Viko said, but he wasn’t really fooling anyone.

“Here.” Micah took off his white cashmere scarf and slid it around Viko’s neck. Immediately it was dyed a deep red. “Hold this there to stop the bleeding.” He took Viko’s good hand and pressed it to his neck, illustrating his words.

“If you can’t go on,” Kalan said, addressing Viko for what was probably the first time since this quest had started, “just let us know, and we’ll stop.”

And he started running, taking Skylar’s arm to urge her along the narrow trampled pathway through the foliage and trees. Airi was running as well. Skylar had let her blade disappear. But the adrenaline of the magic lingered, allowing her legs to propel her forward even though she was exhausted. She could still see the white, dirt stained faces of the thirsty vampires advancing toward her. She shook it off.

“Will Mayrin be okay?” she asked, branches whipping at her arms and face.

“She always is,” Airi replied.

Right.

Skylar looked over her shoulder. Micah and Viko were running, slowly but surely, following behind them. As long as she could still see them, Skylar thought, it would be okay. They just needed to create some distance between them and the vampires, because after that light was gone, they wouldn’t stay in their holes for very long.