Familiarity Bleeds Contempt
Anthelis bit down and drew back the tawny flesh around the doe’s neck. It tore open with a crackling groan, bubbling blackish red over the fur and across the dhampyl’s pale features. He quickly moved his face to the hole, getting coppery slime shot into his nose. Ignoring the pungent sting, he slurped loudly.
The forest around them croaked on through the night. Bats flittered across the moon, and a wolf howled from the distant hills. Giant insects, like darts, occasionally buzzed overhead, knocking loose a drizzle from the damp leaves with the staccato beat of their wings. Keepers tried to focus on the spread of cards before him. He sat lotus style on the wet earth, daintily placing the thin images on the detritus bed, praying no wind would come and scatter his divination. However, if it did, then even that would be a sign he could read.
Vulgar grunting disturbed his reverie. Anthelis was gorging himself, frantically working his teeth toward the creature’s spine. Blood was all over him. When he found his mark with a crunch, he let out another groan of pleasure and sucked even harder, cheeks welling up before each galvanized gulp.
“That be truly disgusting,” Keepers said without looking up. He was not enjoying the message in his augury and his company was just making it worse.
“Human,” the dhampyl gurgled before swallowing another mouthful of fluids. He sighed audibly. “Right you are, human. But, nonetheless,” he wiped his mouth, “it’ll have to do.” He plunged back down into the animal, gnawing fiercely.
“Does it now? I heard ya half-dead hadn’t those sort of,” George squinted uncomfortably with the word, “needs.”
The dhampyl snorted. “Of course not. Not like the True.” He tore loose a piece of gristle and spat it away. “But still, at least it’s something.”
“So you’re like a drunkard, drinking even when the warmth a’ spirit ain’t even in it.”
His only response was a mingled chuckle and slosh. He inhaled labouredly through his nose, without letting up, almost choking when he next spoke, “Not for sustenance,” finished swallowing with a belch, “for prowess.” He went on, and after his last draught, he threw the doe’s head away and cried out, “Ahhh, here we go…”
Anthelis’s eyes swelled red. Tremors shook his body, for an instant. His nose contorted upward slightly, becoming more porcine. His outstretched fingers quivered as his nails became black and narrowed, finally lurching outward another inch and another and another, pealing loose flesh with their serrated edges. On his face, it was visible that the pain mingled with the ecstasy of the bestial transformation. He stood up, swaying with glee, and let droop open his fanged maw. It tasted anew the scents of the air.
The other looked then at the feral countenance, and it stirred up the past night’s images in George’s mind.
They slink along the greystone corridor, stealthily, until they come to an intersection. Keepers peeps over the edge for a second and falls back flat. He signals silently to Anthelis, with two fingers first against his chest, then motioning to either side of the hall to their left with both hands. ‘Two guards, flanking the pass.’ The dhampyl nods in accord, and returns with his own hand signal, pointing to George, then to the closest wall, then crosses his fisted arms at the wrist. ‘Restrain the one on the left.’ Keepers solemnly affirms, and the two round the bend.
George runs up on his guardsman, who is dumbfounded, and throws his arms around him, snaking his right hand under the armpit and wrapping it up and over to cover the human’s mouth in a tangled wrestle that brings them both against the wall with a slam. The guard’s eyes are wide with terror and his left arm flails wildly at an angle, unable to reach his adversary. The right arm is pinned down.
The Vraash runs at George’s side until a stride from his own quarry, and leaps forward like a great cat, hands up and clawed and legs high and arced. In that instant, the guard reaches for the hilt of his shortsword. Before it can loose the blade, Anthelis lands hard and is straddling the human, leg’s locking around both arms and dhampyl hands grabbing the poor fool’s head. In one motion, the head goes back and Anthelis’s fangs bite down on the exposed jugular.
George struggles to hold his man still, while Anthelis tears apart the guard behind him. Fear overtakes the prey. He goes rigid, and without turning, George first hears the slump and then feels Anthelis’s breath on his own neck.
Out loud, the dhampyl says, “He’s mine now.” The voice is different; it’s gravelly, hissing and spitting like a monster of hunger and malice.
George lets go, and there is a second when the human tries to cry out. Before his voice finds a note, Anthelis is upon him in a blur. Talons ripping, jagged teeth rending, it is a savage mauling. The human has no chance to scream, his words bubble out of his throat with the rest of his lifeblood.
Anthelis Eron Vraash is no longer the lithe, composed dhampyl calling on rank and station, no longer the picture of Imperial statesman. The taste of human blood did something to him. His hands are brutal five-bladed weapons. He’s a violent flurry of gore. He’s a creature laced with hideous cunning and the face of a daemon.
Casting stealth to the Hells, the dhampyl runs through the halls, straight into guards, plunging his claws into their bellies and swatting aside their swords and clubs. George follows in a haze, and at one point a blade pierces the half-dead’s side. George stands behind amazed. Turning wrathful on his assailant, eyes gleaming red, Anthelis buries his fangs straight into the man’s face, drinking blood from his bursting eyes. From black veins in his abdomen fresh blood sputters forth, congealing, and the wound instantly heals. They run from the guardhouse leaving a trail of dead.
The Assassin; a High Card of the Fortune Deck
Through the back alleys they dart, maddening danger, the music in their minds screaming a fevered pitch. A human with his dog sees them pass, and Anthelis snarls at him. The sound echoes all around them. The human cowers and covers his face while the dog breaks its rope and bolts, disappearing under a broken fence. George tries to keep up with the Second Custodian, but his chest burns with ragged breath and his feet slip more than once in the mud. On they press. Officially, civilization leaves them at the tree line, but Keepers knows it had fled them a long time ago.
His breathing had become ragged. George drew the last card for his spread, and laid it down over his Focal Piece. The card of betrayals, The Assassin. Nothing boded well.
“I found him,” Anthelis growled. “Up north a bit. Wounded. Let’s move.”
George gathered his articles and began to stand. “Aw’right then I guess.” He tried to sound mirthful, but his voice cracked. “Let’s find her.”
The Vraash turned his baleful gaze on the human, curling his lip, the right half of his mouth a collection of tear-shaped ivory. “Her?”
“Them,” he looked down at the deck of cards in his hand. “I meant them.”