The Vampire & Her Witch

Sybyll swept through the corridors of Hanrahan Keep like a dark crimson wind. For all that it had been her father’s home all his life, and her mother’s home for many years, she saw no signs of Baron Brighton Hanrahan or her mother, the Baroness Caitlin.

Instead, as she moved through the hallways and past the tapestries and paintings that depicted the glories of old, she found only images of Ian Hanrahan or his father Aiden the usurper. Each time she passed a monument to the glory of either man, her axe lashed out, casually destroying hundreds of gold sovereigns worth of questionable art as she advanced on the guest rooms.

When she arrived, however, it was immediately obvious that Ian Hanrahan had fled long ago, perhaps before the first Tuscan launched one of their iron sling bullets at the walls of Hanrahan town.

”Ye didn’a believe they could defend yer home for even an hour,” she snorted as she inspected the room that had been ransacked for anything that might be useful in an escape. ”It won’t save ye though, cousin,” she said with a dark smile behind the grinning skull of her visor.

The inner structure of her family home might be unfamiliar to her, after all, she was already an exile in all but name by the time her mother gave birth, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t follow the traces that Ian, his son, and a knight had left behind when they fled toward the only path of escape still available to them.

Sybyll had learned more than just dancing in her years on Airgead Mountain and Jalal taught her to use each of her extraordinary senses to their fullest in order to find and stalk her prey. Just the scent of heavy perfume mixed with oily, greasy sweat that lingered in the air would have been enough for the vampire who had received Nyrielle’s Potence of Blood to track down the fleeing baron, but he and his companions had left dozens of other minor traces behind in their haste to reach the ’safety’ of the tunnels.

The trail led her to an opulent set of chambers where her cousin had spared little expense in ’updating’ the personal quarters of Hanrahan Baron. Luxurious carpets imported from the old countries across the sea covered the floors, while the furnishings had been replaced with tables and chairs carved from exotic hardwoods from the heartlands of the Kingdom of Gaal.

”Wasteful idiot,” Sybyll muttered as she strode toward the extra-large hearth that covered much of one wall in the sitting room. It took only a few moments of tracing her hand along the well worn stones of the hearth to find the hidden catch that transformed a narrow portion of the wall into a cleverly concealed door leading into a lightless spiral staircase that would eventually take her to the tunnels beneath the keep.

According to her mother, there were four ways into the tunnels hidden within the keep, and two exits. One of the tunnels led to the basement of a clerk’s office outside the keep’s walls, and had been intended to give the baron’s family a method of slipping into town unobserved should they ever have a need to do so. It was the second tunnel, however, leading out beyond the town walls, that Ian Hanrahan had taken to escape, and Sybyll wasted no time in following his trail.

The darkness of the tunnel wrapped around her like a comforting blanket, bringing with it a measure of relief from the pain of the wounds inflicted by Sir Tommin’s Holy Light Blade. The faint smell of smoke lingered in the dark tunnel, leading her through the passage that was barely wide enough for her armored figure to pass.

When she finally emerged from the tunnel, taking the stone steps leading upward two at a time, the space she emerged into smelled strongly of straw, horses, and underneath it, the scent of someone only recently slain.

”Captain Lusia,” Sybyll called as she emerged from the tunnel into the dimly lit stable. ”Did me cousin give ye any trouble?”

”No trouble at all, Dame Sybyll,” the petite captain said, emerging from the darkness between two stalls with a wide smile on her delicate, mousy features. ”I thought I could tease Rafal about earning one of their earrings for killing a metal man, but this one was old and feeble,” she said, gesturing to the collapsed figure of an armored knight. A small, thin blade protruded from the slit in his visor as if it had become wedged in his helm when the aging Sir Dollin fell.”

”Sir Dollin Halsall,” Sybyll said as she inspected the crest on the man’s tabard. She didn’t know much about the man other than a vague impression that he had kept to the edges of the fighting during the War of Inches, arriving with ’reinforcements’ once it was clear that the tide was turning toward victory.

She was certain that he boasted of several achievements in that war, but it seemed like he’d turned his knack for knowing which way the wind was blowing in battle into the sort of spineless service that would see him escorting Ian Hanrahan out of the keep even after Loman had ordered the portly lord’s arrest.

”Tha world won’a miss him. Ye did well, Lusia,” she praised, kneeling down to gently lay a hand on the petite scout’s shoulder. Even if he was old, the layers of armor could have made him a significant threat to the unarmored Lightfoot scouts under Lusia’s command, but she’d clearly handled him with precision that few could match.

”Now, where’s me cousin?” Sybyll asked. ”This reunion is long overdue.”

”Just outside,” Lusia said, waving for Sybyll to follow her. ”He’s tied up with his son. Poor boy, his father yelled at him constantly until we dragged them out into the snow and threatened to let them freeze to death if they weren’t quiet. You’d think it was the boy’s fault that your cousin was too fat and stupid to fight off my scouts.”

Outside, more than a dozen Lightfoot scouts stood guard over the bound figures of Ian Hanrahan and his son Bastian. Both men had been tied like swine ready to be taken to market with their hands and feet secured behind them as they lay on their sides in the snow. Bastian looked like he’d fainted dead away at some point, but he was still clearly breathing and his body twitched occasionally as he shivered in the cold night air.

Ian Hanrahan, however, glared furiously at the scouts who held him captive, and his expensive doublet and breeches bore bloodstains from half a dozen minor wounds where one of the scouts had ’reminded’ him that it was in his best interests to comply if he didn’t want to share Sir Dollin’s fate.

When Sybyll emerged from the stables, however, his face went pale and bloodless and his eyes grew wide in horror as the Crimson Knight finally arrived to claim his life.

”Hello, Cousin Ian,” Sybyll said as she removed her darksteel helm, revealing her scarred, bone-white face and crimson hair to the man who had been responsible for her mother’s death. ”Do ye remember me?”