Moving down a long corridor, he turned a corner and walls disappeared on either side of him as the building opened up into the main storage room. Before him stretched a long aisle with piles of crates stacked in discrete sections on either side. Between the piles were smaller cross-aisles, and in the distance, he could hear the awful sound of the undead moaning as they lapped up Tailtiu’s euphoria-inducing blood.
Nothing moved or approached him. Apparently, the feeding was so intense it had robbed them of their wits and senses. From what he had seen before, his aunt was in one of the corners, and from the sounds he was hearing, it was at the far end of the warehouse from where he had entered, either on the left or the right.
Absently, he knew he should be afraid. He should be absolutely terrified. He had been the first time he had met one of the creatures, in the street in front of Laina’s home. Then he hadn’t had any real idea of what he was facing and seeing them had made it all the more terrible. By all rights he should be more scared now.
Maybe it was the running, suggested the voice in the back of his head. His heart was already racing, so perhaps he couldn’t tell the difference now, since his fear couldn’t make it beat any faster. But in truth, in his mind’s eye, all he could see was Tailtiu’s stricken gaze as her mouth had issued an airy attempt at a scream.
He was furious.
Marching purposefully down the aisle, the sounds became clearer as he went. It was the corner to the right. By the time he reached the middle of the building, he began to see bodies sprawled in the cross-aisles. Vampires writhing in ecstasy, unable to control the vile pleasure coursing through their veins. Without stopping, he kept a mental count, ten, twelve, seventeen, twenty-five. He lost track somewhere around thirty-five, and after that he just tried to keep a rough estimate.
When he reached the end and turned to the right, he had already passed a hundred, and ahead of him he could see a grotesque mound of bodies heaving to and fro. There were at least half as many more there in the corner, scrabbling with one another to try and reach the center of the pile. Some of those on the outside had given up and were now licking the stone floors, desperately trying to find one more drop of Tailtiu’s blood.
The sight filled him with disgust, and rage bloomed in his heart, a red flower of hatred waiting to be released. Something moved behind him, and he turned. A vampire was standing a short distance away, staring at him vapidly with semi-curious eyes.
Chapter 24
Will’s force-lance removed the vampire’s head, causing a black fountain to spew upward from the stump of its neck. He turned back to the writhing pile of vampire bodies and strode onward, drawing more turyn in as he walked.
He had only cast the spell twice before, during his practices, so he had a good idea of how much turyn to invest, but his anger wasn’t satisfied with such prudence. Once he was within fifteen feet, Will drew out Ethelgren’s Illumination and poured power into it. Closing his eyes, he lifted his hand above his head and released the spell with an inchoate scream, “Face the sun, you sons of bitches!”
The world went white, and a hundred voices rose to the rafters in an unholy howl of inconceivable agony as the vampires began to burn.
Will had known what to expect from the spell, though he had put more into it than perhaps he had needed to. The flesh of Tailtiu’s undead tormentors turned out to be exceptionally fragile under the unforgiving glare of Ethelgren’s masterpiece. Six globes of searing incandescence spun outward from his hand, spinning and twisting in a spiral pattern as they brought light into every nook and cranny around him.
That was the genius of the spell. Rather than simply producing a single brilliant globe, it created moving spheres that would prevent any of the creatures from hiding in the shadows provided by crates, boxes, or other obstacles. The spheres moved outward, and the air was soon filled with the dust of collapsing corpses as they disintegrated into stinking ash.
Another interesting feature of the spell was that the globes of light were intangible; they weren’t impeded by physical objects or walls. Standing close to a corner of the building, the spheres spent roughly three-quarters of their time and energy outside the building, but there were enough of them that there was always one or two inside. They followed their preset pattern, moving outward from Will’s position until the radius of the circle they traced was roughly fifty feet from where he stood. Then they gradually faded out. From start to finish, the spell lasted roughly a minute, and there was nothing left moving within the circumference the spheres had inscribed with their movements.
Except Will, of course. Silence fell, and darkness returned as he slowly opened his eyes. In front of him was a mound of ash interspersed with clothing. Tailtiu’s body was nowhere to be seen, but he knew where she had to be. Wading into the ash, he found himself waist deep once he reached the center, and there his foot bumped into something solid.
The stench was a tangible thing, a sweet yet acrid smell reminiscent of rotting meat. Ignoring his revulsion, he bent and plunged his hands into the mounded dust. It was too deep for him to reach her easily, and he was forced to bend farther, until his head and shoulders both went under. A moment later his fingers found her and he straightened gently, his hands under her arms as he pulled and backed out.
They were fully in the corner now, and when he examined his aunt, he was aghast. She was covered in a layer of white dust, and her once-lithe form was naked and torn, covered with small punctures and tears where fangs had ripped her flesh. She seemed to have shrunk, and her weight in his arms was a fraction of what it should have been. Tailtiu was little more than a skeleton covered in broken skin and desiccated flesh. And she was still bound by long, iron chains anchored in the wood beams that supported the building.
Anxious to free her quickly, his first impulse was to use the force-lance spell, but he realized that even if he held onto a chain before blasting it, the spell might not work. If the links didn’t part, the force of the blow might jerk the chain free of his hands and damage her limbs. There were better options.
He quickly constructed a spell to alter the properties of steel, the same one he had used at the dam. There was plenty of slack, so he gathered the four chains together with one hand and released the spell, watching as the metal changed from dull brown to a matte beige color. Summoning his falchion, he shattered the links.
Using the razor edge of his weapon on such a target went against every instinct he had gained when training as a swordsman, but he didn’t care. He would worry about getting the nicks out of the blade later. He started to put the sword away so he would have both hands to carry Tailtiu, but a new sound made him pause and turn his head.
Not all the vampires were dead. A significant portion had been too far beyond the limit of his spell. Some of them were horribly burned and disfigured, some merely scorched, and a few were utterly untouched. There were at least twenty gathered together, watching him warily.
At some point during his doings, his heart had slowed down, recovering from the exertion of his run. It leapt into a frantic rhythm now, and Will felt his mouth go dry. He had gone from anger to sorrow, and now he felt the beginnings of despair. Tailtiu was dead, his rush to save her had come to naught, and now he would likely join her.