I’ll never get used to this, thought Will. Then again, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to get used to it. Was it better to be inured to such horror, or to remain unspoiled, happy, and innocent? He had a feeling it was the latter, but life hadn’t given him much choice in the matter.
The jar exploded as the vampire finally emerged with an unholy howl of pain and outrage. It glared at him hatefully as the chains arrested its movement close to the center of the cage. “You will die for this, human!” it hissed. As he had suspected, the chains were inside the creature’s body, where the flesh had grown over them.
Will stared at it coldly, trying to give no sign of the extreme unease he felt. “I sincerely doubt that, spawn of the grave.” With a thought he sent a force-lance through the bars, removing the vampire’s head. Its body fell sideways, and he rushed forward with a shallow bowl, trying to catch as much as he could of the black blood leaking from the stump of its neck. The head lay off to one side, staring at him and gnashing its teeth. Without lungs, it couldn’t make its curses audible.
Unlike the pig, the vampire’s blood emerged sluggishly, without a living heart to pump it. His first bowl filled, and he grabbed a second. When that was full, the neck had stopped bleeding and had begun to heal over, while the arms still scrabbled aimlessly about, searching for the head. He removed his two bowls, poured them in to a jar that he could tightly stopper against light, then stored it in the limnthal.
With his prize stored away, Will used several force-lances to further dismember the creature. Then he opened the cage and used his sword to do a more precise job. It was bloody and awful. The smell alone was enough to turn his stomach.
His goal was to return the vampire to a pile of parts, devoid of vital fluid. It was a harder job than he imagined, and he wound up wishing he was only covered in pig’s blood by the time he was done. Then he removed the chains and stored the vampire’s body in a new jar, covered it, and stored it away in the limnthal.
Throughout the horrid ordeal, Will made mental notes. The next time he needed to harvest vampire blood, he would have a better process in place. Going up the stairs, he opened the door. The fading rays of the sun burned away the black blood coating his tunic and sticking to his hair. He used Selene’s spell to further purify himself.
Blake and Tiny were fully engaged in cutting up the pig, but it was obvious they wouldn’t finish soon enough. The sun was dropping quickly, and Blake needed to leave with the others. Will shooed them to the side and stored the rest of the pig in the limnthal. “You can finish this tomorrow. Blake you need to go.”
“All right,” said the manservant. “Are you going to come see them off?”
“It would just give them another opportunity to argue. Tiny and I will head to the Alchemy building. Make sure they know I won’t be back, otherwise they might try to wait,” ordered Will.
Blake nodded and Will and Tiny set off.
“Janice is going to be unhappy about us sneaking off without giving her a chance to join us,” said the big warrior.
“But you didn’t argue against the idea, did you?” said Will.
“Guilty as charged.”
Lawrence was once again manning the desk at the Alchemy building. He glanced up as Will signed in. “Hi, Will. Who’s your friend?”
“This is T—”
“I’m his bodyguard,” interrupted Tiny, affecting a menacing expression.
“Tiny, stop it,” said Will, embarrassed. Then he turned back to Lawrence. “He’s a good friend of mine.”
Tiny nodded. “That’s true, but I’m also his bodyguard.” He held out his hand. “The name is Skullcrusher.”
Lawrence wasn’t quite sure whether they were joking or not, but he offered his own paw and watched Tiny’s hand engulf his. “Nice to meet you.”
Once they were on the stairs, Will turned to his friend. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Janice said I seem very nice.”
“You are nice.”
The big man frowned. “It’s well known that women prefer dangerous men. Besides, I am your bodyguard; it won’t hurt for me to project a more intimidating image.”
“This is hilarious. So you’re doing this because you think it will make you more appealing to Janice?”
In response, Tiny shoulder-butted Will, knocking him into the wall. He caught Will’s shoulder before he could fall down the stairs. “Sorry. No, of course not Janice! I meant women in general.”
Will was pretty sure that his eyes had rolled around several times inside his head, but things straightened up a moment later. “You never worried about women in the past. Why now? It seems suspicious.”
“No reason. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about lately.”
“Since when?”
“A while.”
“Since you met Janice?” Will braced himself in case Tiny reacted badly, but his friend kept his involuntary reflexes under control this time.
“The l-last f-f-few months,” stammered Tiny as he utterly failed to lie convincingly.
Will nodded. “All right.”
“Honestly.”
“Sure.”
Tiny’s face was shading toward a bright pink. “You won’t say anything to her, will you?”
Will looked up at him with innocent eyes. “About the fact that you’re looking for someone to court? Or the fact that you’re infatuated with her?” Before the sentence was half out, he dropped down against the landing to avoid the blow that he anticipated, but Tiny didn’t move.
He was stricken by a pang of guilt when he saw the desperate look on Tiny’s face. “Please?” The giant warrior was practically begging.
Will stood back up and patted Tiny’s shoulder. “Of course not. I won’t say a word.” Damn, this is serious. He hoped Tiny wouldn’t wind up with a broken heart, and he resolved to try and stop teasing the man.
With that taken care of, he led Tiny up to the small laboratory he was renting and got busy setting up his latest project: Dragon Heart potions. He couldn’t help but think that the name sounded very impressive, despite the fact that the primary ingredient was singularly disgusting. Then again, I guess the same is true of regeneration potions, he realized.
It took half an hour to get everything set up, and once it was going, they had about an hour before Will would need to decant the product into its final vials and activate the potions. As they stood around, Tiny asked, “Are you sure this is the right thing to be spending your time on?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know what the best course of action is, but although their leader is dead, there’s still an unknown number of vampires hiding in the city, and most of them are young, so they’re likely to continue spreading their corruption. If any of them are still organized, though, then they’ll be attacking en masse tomorrow night.”