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A fledgling vampire fox, only recently turned, must confront one of the most dangerous magical practitioners alive at the behest of her dark church, and the monster who sired her.

This piece was an attempt to create something a little more lighthearted and adventure-y than my previous two offerings, which were solidly focused in horror. My hope is that fans of fantasy fiction and fight scenes will find something out of the ordinary in both arenas to entertain them.

This piece is a sequel to "The Key to a Vixen's Heart", found here: https://www.sofurry.com/view/2155121

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Attemper fair, with gentle air

The sunshine and the rain,

That kindly earth with timely birth

May yield her fruits again.

-Edward White Benson

The two of them fled across the mountains in the cold winter moon, the fledgling and her sire. She was a red fox, slender and hard as a dueling blade. The vampire was the vampire, and he was Master, his chiropteran body forever burning and forever bound. The smoking tri-crosses he wore on chains about his robes kept him in permanent painful check. He moved with all of night's dark grace, and she hopped along behind as best she could. Now and then, he was obliged to stop and patiently wait for her, standing against the sky, and it was as if the stars behind him had been swallowed by the void.

There was no helping it. Sister Linnet was only a year among the dead.

“Slow." He said to her, voice like leather that had once been soft, but was now frayed and brittle. “Dawn will break. One hour." The thought stirred her into a panic, even if she felt as though evening had only just settled itself an hour or two ago. A fledgling vampire is sometimes little more than an unthinking animal—and even for those who keep their wits, instinct rules. The master was a man of fathomless compassion, but results came before all with him, and service shortly after. He did not abide animals.

The vixen met him at last standing on the mountain summit, looking down upon the winter fields. The Master extended one long claw, pointing down at the great city below, with its ivory turrets glimmering like snow-sculptures in the patchy moonlight. “Verse of Grass is here?" he rasped. No plume of steam rose from his lips to be snatched away by the wind.

“Yeah." She said. “Relatively certain he is."

“Relatively." It was a question, and Sister Linnet looked away.

“It was years ago. We barely spoke- he paid me for the job, and I did it. He seemed mortal then."

The master was silent, but the fledgling did not lift her eyes. Her life as a thief had been short and full of terror, but it had been hers. This non-life was someone else's, but still, she clung to it very hard. After what felt like a long time, the master said: “Is mortal still." A pause. “Go and take his head."

“Go what?" Her heart nearly beat again, and she felt fear move in her like the passage of a thunderbolt. Linnet looked at him, moon caught in the red-ring trap of her eyes, and she betrayed herself. Master hated fear in his fledgling. Too late now. She was caught. “I'm a year old!" she whispered, trying to bite each word back into her mouth even as she said them. “Master, he's a magus, he'll pull me in half—"

“Year is long enough. Kill." He pointed down at the city again. “Or wait for sunrise. Expect you in three days."

As she looked back into his scarlet eyes, Sister Linnet's paws began to tremble. “Yes, master," was all she said. They parted, and she fled for shelter before the breaking day. When the morning arrived, she was already curled in the back of some dank and dripping cave, dreaming the way they dream, when they are young and cannot get back to their coffins.

Fitfully.

***

She pleads with them to stop. She says anything. She says she will do anything. She tells them things, truths and lies, incredible fantasies, whatever comes to mind. Whatever they want, they can have it, if only they will put down the fucking cross.

Sometimes it is the sisters. Sometimes it is the gangly maned wolf friar, who holds her head and peels up her eyelids with a claw. Sometimes she sees the Master looking out of the shadows, his silhouette obscured by the dancing fume of his holy bondage. Unlike newly-turned Linnet, he can wear crosses. He wears them always, and that which seemed to her inexplicable in life now seems like ravening insanity. Days she stares into that cross, the three sets of arms carving out technicolor afterimages in her vision that haunt her scant sleep. For weeks she burns and yet is not consumed. Is it a pleasure to watch her seize and foam and shake? Do they enjoy it? Every single one of them has bright red eyes, and every single pair reveals nothing.

That was how her nights began, usually. But as is the case for many fledglings, Linnet's dreams allowed time and memory to convolute.

The maned wolf friar makes her touch it, makes her hold it and the pain eclipses that of having to look, but he says hold it, in the name of God, hold it or we will push a stake through your heart right now, right now.

Her master wipes a single bloody tear from her cheek and says: “Better today."

The one-armed rabbit nun leads in a feral swine on a leash. “You looked hungry, sister. Just leave him by the door when you're done, and we'll have him for supper too. Aren't things better when we work together?"

The liturgy. The prayer. The explanations. The recital, the humility before the Red God. The scraping in the dark as she is taught to sharpen knives.

She takes the iron chain and, shaking, slips it over her neck. A lit match to rest between her breasts, a little iron tri-cross that she finally came to tolerate after weeks of torture.

Her Master's voice. “Never goes away. Never should go away. Burns me always, impairs. Affects language centers. Broca's area. Aphasia. Damage may be permanent- cannot know. Will never take them off." It is the most he has ever said at once.

The warm leather of his wings as he holds her when she sobs. Strange compassion in the dark.

All this swirled within Sister Linnet's daylight dreaming, and because she had no coffin the thoughts and memories harried her, picking at her like birds. But the Master learned to endure it. He found peace. She, too, could learn, but it was a matter of discipline and time. Once, Linnet asked the master how old he was.

“Very." He'd said and smiled with those too-long fangs hanging down from that slender flying-fox muzzle. Of all her nightmares, the memory of that smile terrified her most, and always she saw it when night fell, and she awoke again to hunger.

***

The fledgling had to make do with vermin. They weren't remotely satisfying to her anymore, even in great need, but she caught them anyway. She snapped their little spines and sipped to her distant approximation of content while the squeaks and the jerking slowly stilled. Sister Linnet drained each one away until she was sure she could keep her unrelenting hunger at bay while she was knocking on doors and asking questions.

The townspeople did not want to be questioned. They saw her robes and her cross and her eyes and shrunk away. They hurried home, feeling unconsciously the chill of her shadow stretching toward them. Each of them said something like “It's late, ask tomorrow morning" or “We've no shelter for you flagellants" or “Sympathetic to the faith though we are, we know nothing, Sister." But she knew they meant “You scare me, and if I let you inside my home you will kill me." Her former life as a thief never earned her any love, but at least she could get something out of an hour or two's questioning. Outside the walls of her monastery, this was generally how things were. Particularly late at night. Some ancient mortal instinct loathed her presence, and her Master had not yet revealed the methods by which she might twist it, or make it go blind.

Eventually she had to catch them on the street outside of taverns she could not enter. Each time, Linnet took pains to be cautious and delicate with her questions: “I am looking for an old banker, Rafford Bucolo. He's a mule deer. Maybe 40- he used to live in this town," but with every word, her audience sensed her lurking interest in their throats, and caught more and more frequent glimpses of her eyes. “He moved out years ago," was the common response, but nobody seemed to know precisely where the banker had gone.

The night was beginning to drag on, and frustration was settling in. Midnight came, and she knew nothing, and all the while she was pondering the consequences of failure. The Master had left them totally unsaid. Sister Linnet has been made aware of his capacity for the unspeakable, and so she fretted up and down the streets, searching desperately, with increasing incaution. She almost didn't hear it when someone called “Hey, sister!" Her hunger, however, pricked up its ears.

An old otter in a mariner's coat waved his paw to her from within a doorway warm with lamplight. “Sister," he whisper-called again, and Linnet went to him. It had been so long since a voice expressed eagerness to her, want of her, that she felt a finger of reverent joy run itself along her dead heart.

He smiled at the fox and went inside, calling “Come in, please. I'll make you tea."

And in an instant the ancient magic defending his home was torn from the building, ripped like a bandage from a wound that had not yet healed. Sister Linnet walked right through his front door, marveling. No one else had ever done it for her before. They all seemed to know better.

She stared longingly around at the humble home, simple and orderly. A fire was burning hot at the far end of the room, and on the hearth were a number of simple effects, trinkets and curios from the distant southern continent, talismans, charms. Such things counted as symbols of faith, but they had been made to drive off evil spirits, and not vampires. She felt only a faint pressure.

“Come warm yourself by the fire." Said the otter. “Aren't you cold? You'll freeze to death out there."

“Oh." Said Sister Linnet and folded her ears in a posture of apology. Shit, she wasn't remotely dressed for winter. No wonder people were avoiding her. They'd walked miles of frozen winter ground and Master had simply let her wander into town without mentioning it. This was a lesson. An examination. “Yes, of course. I'm quite sorry, someone took my coat coming out of a tavern and I've been hopeless ever since."

The otter gave her a sympathetic look and took her to a pair of plainly upholstered chairs by the fire, and Linnet politely sat down when one was offered. “That'll be because you're redcloth- they hate the Church out here. They think you're a lot of sadists and flagellants." Linnet smiled in a way that didn't show her fangs. “They think you're here with one of your inquisitors, looking to chop people's fingers off, but look at you. You're a poor young girl out alone. Old Sully knows better." He smiled and tapped his round, brown head. “The old Red Church did me a good turn several years ago. They might not be as polite as the Four Fortunes devotees, or have the Heliad's cathedrals, but you're no…" He struggles to find a polite enough word. He fails. “Cult."

“Very charitable, Mr. Sully. I am Sister Linnet. On behalf of the Church of the Red God, I bless you and your house. Peace attend thee, sufferer."

“Oh," He chuckled, delighted that Linnet had concealed her offense, “I'm no sufferer. I'm no devotee, see, but… as I said, your folk did me a kindness once. Long ago." The otter stood and bustled to a kettle, which rested on a table a short ways away. He sloshed it and set it by the fire. “And what kindness is done me, I pay back." When he sat back down, he saw that the good sister's gaze had wandered.

Linnet's eyes traced the curiosities on the otter's mantlepiece for a moment. Many different lands out there. Places she had never seen, could never have gone when she was alive. Now she was immortal. She would walk this earth until the sun took her or she was otherwise slain. She could visit them all now, and there was no real rush. If she managed, somehow, not to lose to the Verse of Grass.

The fledgling's gaze lingered on a small statuette, a totemic wolf, representative of male aspect of his entire species. He was warlike and proud and an inarguably good fit for the job of 'male' aspect, Linnet judged. Her mind wandered to the gray wolf Kite, her fellow orphan, thief, and slave, and how she could run her paws through his luscious winter pelt, warm and soft. How she could make him laugh by sticking her cold nose in his neck fur, when she could manage to sneak up on him. She thought of his dismantled body in the hands of the Master in the last moments of her wretched life, and then she had to stop thinking.

“Sister Linnet?" Sully said. “Something catch your eye?"

“Oh—" she snapped out of her reverie. “I'm sorry, I was just admiring the…" Not the wolf. She scanned for something else. Her eyes landed on a little scrap of paper, on which was a lovely charcoal rendering of a young hyena with a roguish smile. “… drawing of the young man. Someone took very great pains with all that fine detail."

“Very great," said the otter. “That's Uliya. I drew that the day he came aboard the vessel I was serving on. He barely spoke the language- the first mate told him to go down to the scuppers, as he was to be our cook, and Uliya decked the bastard right in his muzzle. I hated that first mate so much, Uliya and I became friends for life." Sully smiled up at the picture, but Linnet could feel a little bit of his sorrow weighing down the otter's expression. The new predator in her sat at attention in the presence of mortal woe. “He was, as it happens, that 'good turn' I mentioned earlier."

“What did the church have to do with your vessel?" She said, trying to disguise her hunger and swaying her tail genially.

“Nothing. We sailed together for seven years, and I took him back to my homeland out on the western horn. When we came into port, I was informed that my father had passed away while we'd been at sea. I thought it was fate- my father wasn't a wealthy man, but I had a home for us now, we had our wages, we could live in peace. He could cook for me. Anything he wished, we had peppers from his home, spices. We were comfortable."

“You were lovers?" said Linnet.

“Best friends." Sully said, and then shook his head. “And lovers. And everything."

Her eyes widened, and she looked at the sketch again. The dark operator within her spirit prowled back and forth, listening for every word. “But the west—"

“Yes," he said. “You don't need to remind me. It was foolish to think we could have been left alone in our little world." Sully went silent for a little, “They ah… found us one night, in our bed. They dragged him out because I was… well, because…" He gestured, and Linnet took it to mean the hyena had been submitting at the time. “The judge was present. I hardly had time to dress before they began stoning him."

The lovely pain of this was threatening to make her drool, and the vixen had to look away several times. She could smell a tear threatening to form on his eye, and the mixture of hunger and the single drop of cold clear pity the otter inspired was unnerving to feel. She breathed deep, meditated on scripture, and willed herself to be still. “… I'm sorry." She said at last.

“You don't have to be." Sully said. “A priest of the Red God was there. He stood over Uliya and said “What man has appointed the death of this sufferer?", and the judge said that it was the custom of our people to stone men who waste their lives in idleness and disease. The priest drew his sword and struck off the paw of the judge at the wrist- a thick old black bear, too. I thought it was a trick of the moonlight at first. And the red priest said… oh, what was the phrase he used… 'There is nothing in this life that is wasted. Even pain. The hand of the Red God is turned against you.' And they left."

Linnet's ear flicked. “And Uliya…?"

“Lived." Sully said and looked longingly up at the charcoal sketch. “For a time. We left with all we could, of course, but after he healed, he developed these terrible shakes, and I," he swallowed, “I lost him within five years. I never loved again."

The magnitude of her starvation was incredible. He was bothering to hide nothing. It was obscene, like a feral fawn rolling in blood before a feral wolf. The fox's mouth was so dry.

“But I never forgot that priest, or the church of the Red God." Sully gave her a weak smile. “And that was many years ago, in any case. I'm just happy you can be warm tonight, sister." She would never be warm again. “Happy too, of course, that I can share my tea. Do you want some?"

The pot whistled and she said yes, because if she didn't drink something, the violence she was contemplating would manifest. Some insane scrap of humanity that had clung to her bones when all the rest was hewn away was insisting, vehemently, that she stop herself. It was like asking an ant to crush an elephant, but somehow, she managed it.

They talked all night long. She talked about what she could of life at the chapel, her fellow sisters of the cloth. She performed a few recitations of scripture, and he did not know them well enough to correct her when she had to fill forgotten gaps with convincing invention. In return, Sully told her stories of his time with Uliya, and she didn't mind because she was an eastern girl at heart. She asked him about Rafford, and he told her the man lived out in a copse just north of the town in a little villa. He hardly ever came to town anymore, and many had forgotten he belonged to it in the first place. This was excellent news.

When at last they decided to retire, the otter showed her the way to the cellar, where she wished to sleep, and then he bid her goodnight.

Sully did not see or hear her behind him on the stairs. The good sister spent most of the night's remainder hunched over his sleeping body with her muzzle open wide. And though strings of drool from her fangs hung down to dew up his neck, the otter did not stir.

***

It took all night for Linnet to gather the will not to tear out Sully's throat. She waited, jaws hinged wide and dripping, until the morning threatened and ended her internal stalemate in the otter's favor. The fledgling fled silent down the stairs, grateful and starving.

She lay in the cellar for the final hour of the evening, curled in the peaceful dark. It was hard without her coffin. The dreams continued, and memories crept over her again like a carpet of infant spiders. The day her eyes were cut out to make room for the eyes of the Red God. Dinners she'd had with the sisters, sipping at a goblet of pig's blood. Drilling her swordsmanship in the deep basements, for days and days and days on end, until she could no longer move. The dark presence of His Excellency, the bishop.

When she woke, it was moonrise and the land was dark. She rose to see if Sully perhaps was still awake, but when she sought him out the house was empty.

The fox wasn't overly troubled—it was very possible he'd gone to the tavern. Maybe he tried to wake her, but she'd slept through it. She was hungry too, and though she would have sold what was left of her soul for a feral goat or something. It was going to have to be rats again. Anything more than vermin was forbidden to her, except in times of great need. There was no lying about it either. Their bishop was an inquisitor of alarming reputation, and she did not like his presence in her nightmares. Her mind wandered.

Tonight, you find the magus and kill him somehow. Master said he isn't immortal, so maybe it's doable. As an immortal, you'll have at least that advantage-- but magi in general, even novice Verses, are nightmares. What's the plan, here? Hit him with everything, hack him until he stops moving. Get him unawares, if you can. Maybe you have to drain him. Master would forgive you if you did it to survive. He's weak somewhere. Master thinks you can do it. It has to be something only you can do. And anyway, where did Sully go?

These thoughts followed her down alleyways and into dark places for her supper. The fledgling picked over the dark corners, found a few choice morsels, and ate in contemplative silence. She began to fantasize about meeting the Verse. About what biting him would be like, puncturing him, penetrating him, drinking and feeling the vibration of his cry in her mouth—and then she shook herself, finished her rat, and discarded the rest for some other enterprising scavenger. The sooner this was done, the better.

Sated, Sister Linnet trekked from the light of the city into the dark of the northern copse. It was a number of miles she had to walk, but there was the moon, and the cold couldn't bother her anymore. The little vixen marched over snow ridges and little hills, down into tiny valleys where streams flowed wet and shining, cutting clean through the snow. There was no sound but her boots.

Finally, hours into the night, there it was before her: an emerald set amid pale opal. The magus' estate was grand and opulent with a single high turret rising from its body, and this would have been sufficient for a mere banker. But here and here alone it was springtime, green and fertile and fragrant with dandelion, lilac, and foxglove. Heat rolled from his land, and a thin curtain of fog hung around the edges where it was still bleak midwinter.

This was an arrogance only the magi possessed. The instant she felt the warm breeze roll over her, Linnet took the hilt of her little concealed dueling sword in hand. Her shrike's thorn, Master called it. Even before she'd been a vampire, she'd been a semi-competent swordsman, and death had improved her somewhat. With any luck, however, she wouldn't require these skills tonight. Truly good thieves never did.

The great villa, shrouded in moonlight, welcomed her with serene whispers of a breeze from nowhere. She circled it on the grass for almost thirty minutes, working the problem through in her mind. Within the hour she was on the roof, choosing her point of ingress. When the time came, Sister Linnet took a steadying breath, teased open a window with a small metal crook, and let her instincts guide her through the swallowing dark.

And while she crept the servants slept, and all was green in flower. With red ringed eyes, to kill or die, she treaded to the tower. The fledgling moved amid the shadows and marveled at the change in herself. Some thread of her old life pulled taught as she crawled through the gloom with predator patience, canny as a fox might be, and picked her way through halls and galleries and great tabled rooms with splendid windows to behold the sunrise. Lavish portraits in gilded frames followed her with their eyes, and all around her she could sense the vulnerability of sleeping servants and maids, all of them totally unaware of her or the trauma her dark heart dreamed of inflicting on them. It took every bit of iron Master had alloyed with her will to keep from cracking one of their doors and stealing over to a bedside where she could have her dreadful fill of one of them. She'd sworn oaths however, and was afraid of breaking them. God saw through His own eyes and He could take them back if He so chose.

Soon she found her way into the barrel of the tower and made her way up a winding staircase, past barrels of wine and food stores, past a number of sleeping footmen, exhausted from their day's labors and snoring gently on cots. She came down a dim wooden hallway to a short wooden ladder, which she climbed. Soon the fox could feel something folding the tips of her black ears. A hatch. She pushed up and rose into the night.

“Well, I thought I smelled vixen cunt. Good evening, Linnie." said the Verse of Grass. “Are you eating well? You've lost weight."

The fledgling looked across the great round turret and saw him at last. She'd remembered Rafford as an older stag, fatter, cumbersome and ponderous in every affair of his life. Careful, attentive and meticulous too, he'd been an excellent specimen among bankers. But now here he stood, swathed in forest-green silks and adorned with heavy jewelry, thin and lithe as a proud soldier buck. His face was handsomer, he wore flowering blossoms in his antlers. A true magus.

The red fox picked herself up and stood in the moonlight to face him. The wind turned warm and passed lethargically over the tower, and she saw by moonlight thirteen more figures. Twelve of them were young doe women, each naked and still as they knelt on cushions in solemn obedience. They had been formed kindly by nature, or else by the intervening hand of the Verse of Grass, and the beauty of their bodies was darkly immaculate.

The thirteenth was Sully. He too was bare, save for a silver cord around his throat which the Verse of Grass held in one triumphant fist. His old, weary frame was curled upon the stone of the tower and his tail was desperately tucked to hide the shame of his nakedness. The otter met her eyes across the span, and in them was fear and pleading. He had not been treated with kindness. Seeing this, something stirred in Sister Linnet that was neither fox nor vampire, but whose fangs were very sharp, and who took very a personal offense to Sully's predicament.

“Verse of Grass," She intoned, kicking the trapdoor flat behind her. “By decree of the Holy See, and with the power vested in the Good and Faithful Servants of His Majesty's Holy Inquisition, I name thee 'Heretic'." She flung back the cloth concealing her sword and took the hilt. “In the name of God, Rafford, I command thee to die."

“Oh Linnie, I could see your eyes, but I didn't really think you'd swallowed all that rigmarole," said the stag, his lyrical voice as warm as May. He gave her a sunny smile as he lifted the cord, forcing Sully to sit up or choke, threatening to hang him on the loop of silver wire. “When I first saw you skulking around in town last night, I thought 'oh, she must be very desperate for work', because I assumed you knew better than to risk showing your pelt in front of me again. You fucked me very hard, Linnie. Harder than anyone else from your little guild could even dream of doing." The stag yanked the cord up, the loop tightened. “Not that I need the money now, of course. It was only a symbol for power, in the end. Not the real thing. Not like what I'm going to do to this old man here-- not like what I'm going to do to you."

Warm, fragrant air twisted a flurry of snow above them into a light rain. It glittered briefly in a lunar rainbow as it fell. “Just like that." Said the stag, in almost a whisper.

“It was Father's command. You had it coming anyway."

“I'm sure your ex-'Father' would appreciate the symmetry then. He just loved an extra pinch of misery with everything. And speaking of which, just who is this man to you anyway, eh?" He stroked a length of wire in one hoof-digit, admiring the white shine of it. “He was the only one to let you in last night. I watched from right here as he led you inside, and you couldn't so much as enter a tavern before. What happened to you, Linnie-girl? You used to be such a nice vixen. And then you went and joined the church… and you got yourself bitten, too. What is it like? Being a vampire, I mean?"

Sully's eyes went wide and he squirmed to look at her, the silver wire cutting into his throat and lifting up a dark brown fan of fur. Sister Linnet could smell the sharp spike of fear in the otter and tried to ignore how sumptuous it was in the pleasant spring breeze. She set her jaw and said nothing.

“Oh Sully, didn't you know?" Said the stag, wilting his ears and turning the otter's face toward his with a firm hoof. “You let her into your house last night. And just a little bit ago, when you were screaming for her to come make the pain stop, you let her in here, too."

Shit. Shit, she'd been able to crawl right inside, just like the old days. It should have been a warning, it should have told her something was wrong, but she'd been too absorbed in the memory of her life. Mired in the thrill of hunting for this very monster, who'd been squatting up here like a venomous toad and waiting for her to come up and do something stupid. Stupid fucking fledgling, stupid fucking thief.

“Oh, do you feel bad?" Whispered the stag with a mockery of concern, his eyes and voice betraying real excitement. The wind pulled aside his robes a little, revealing him underneath, eager and youthful as any buck in the flower of manhood. He pinched the silent otter's muzzle, forced Sully's gaze to meet his. “Are you thinking you just got her killed because you were weak? Because you couldn't endure me? Does that remind you of anything, you servile little mortal stain?" The magus leaned in and forced his mouth against the otter's muzzle. Sully squirmed and let out a muffled cry, but the silver cord wrapped tight, forcing him to choke and sputter into the kiss. Moonlight reflected off a panic-tear drawing a line down the otter's face. When the two men parted, a string of saliva connected their muzzles. The Verse of Grass drew it away with a hooftip. “I bet that felt real good. Let's teach Linnie here our game, Sully. I bet she'll want to play. I'll bet she learns real fast."

Sister Linnet felt some gathering tension. Her black paw clutched the hilt of her sword with sudden desperation, but she dared not draw until she understood what was happening. With a flick of his wrist, the cervine magus slid a hooftip up the otter's back, and a hideous shriek split the night air as the tension passed.

The fox beheld with hunger and amaze the thing the Verse of Grass had done.

From the tip of his hoof a long strip, thin as a string, dangled wetly down. It was brown on one side and red on the other and the smell of living sentient blood infused with fear and confusion was heavenly to draw in. A little strip of otter skin, torn fresh away.

The cold blood pooling in her heart sparked, her eyes lit, every strand of her fur stood on end as her hackles lifted.

“If you do that again," said the vixen, and her voice was needle-thin and vampire-cold, “I will flense you clean, old kine."

The ring of the shrike's-thorn sounded in the evening air, and Linnet turned it to show him the white line of the blade against the black sky.

Now he stood at full attention. His own lambent eyes, pink and lovely as flowering rhododendrons, stared laughing into hers. “That's the spirit, little Linnie!" he cried, unable to contain his delight. With a hoof, he kicked Sully down and tossed the silver cord to one of the twelve naked does, who caught it and held the tether in her lap. “Come here, you Red bitch! Let's have us a brawl."

She was on him in a steely flash, bearing down on the stag with half-blind rage. He slithered out of a thrust or two, spun and danced back, leading her into the center of the turret. Around them, the semicircle of does watched silently and Sully gulped ragged pulls of air on the floor, tender and wounded. The smell of his bleeding drove the hungry ravening of Linnet's thorn, and every sweep and jab was brutal strong. The stag slipped around every one, and in her frustration, the fox pressed even harder. Her robes snapped with the speed of her swings, but still she could not touch him. What she would have given just to cut a bit of velvet from those antlers. Just to bite his fingers, put his blood in the air for her to smell, instead of having every third thought divert itself to think of the crumpled form of the weeping old man. It was a cheap fucking trick, and it was working on her. Linnet's attention was splitting.

In a blur of movement, the stag caught the tip of her blade between his hooftips, and though she yanked and pushed, the fox could not take it back. She began to panic, and then there was a gathering tension before Sister Linnet was flung violently to the floor, skipped across the stone like a rock across a lake. That was it, then. The Fearsome Thing, the true magic, the gestureless craft: High Art, which only the magi command. It wrenched away her breath and made her suck squeaking, wheezing breaths through the crushed straw of her windpipe.

Suddenly her dead heart was flooded with desperation. Her paws groped wildly. Where was the damn thorn? Where was her sword? She glanced up to see him holding it there in the moonlight, contemplating the blade serenely. All she'd achieved was to cut the belt of his robe, so that it hung open to billow in the breeze.

“Oh Linnie. I thought you were a swordsman," said the stag. “You even fought a duel in front of me once, remember? You thought I was drunk and half-asleep, but I saw every little turn and cut of yours."

He frowned at the sword, and then down at her. “Dying made you stiff, I guess."

Sister Linnet felt that weird tension once more, and bright red flowers began to blossom all along the length of her weapon. A puff of spring wind blew lazily by and scattered petals all over the tower. The shrike's thorn had perished from reality.

“I'm disappointed. I knew someone would come after me eventually… it's a right of passage in my circles. It's insulting to think that I only merited you. Your little Weeper cult must really look down on me, Linnie." He stepped forward and Linnet drew her lips back, showed her fangs, and hissed a feral rebuke. She had only her teeth now, and his encroaching visage stirred fright into the cauldron of anger boiling away inside her. The Verse of Grass was no wizard, no hedge-mage. He was one of the magi, even if he was young, and he was going to pull her in half, just as she'd told Master he would. Linnet compelled herself to stand, panting, fangs bared and ready. They came together again in an instant, and now it was Linnet's turn to dance and wheel.

The fledgling dipped under the touch of the Verse's hooves. A single touch could well be fatal. She was certain he wanted to touch her, to feel her as she died. So she wound around the thrust and sweep of his bare hooves, feeling a second death passing over her eartips and by her whiskers as every blow fell.

Then the magus overextended. He stretched his wrist slightly too far, and Linnet bit it out, sparing only a moment to gnaw the ulna well before she danced away, mouth full of doe's blood.

Doe's blood?

Her head snapped over in the direction of a smell- one of the cervine maidens was laying on her side in the moonlight, eyes wide and rolling, breasts heaving, body shaking as she spouted blood from a vicious bite-wound on her wrist where the flayed ribbon of her radial artery dribbled and spat. Linnet felt a flush of horror and shame that mingled with the violent sexual triumph of having that need for blood met, a dark red hallelujah smearing itself across the vixen's black lips and white fangs.

Grass was laughing, shaking his head and tapping his untouched wrist, indicating the flawless fur. “That's one. All you have to do is kill me again, Linnie, and again and again until I'm out of leal servants. Think you'll last long enough to do it? Think you can do it before day breaks?"

The fox swallowed a mouth of sweet, nourishing blood, and felt for the nightmare strength lurking in the scarlet mist through which she marched. Vain, mad pride gathered in her breast and lit her dead nerves aflame. Sister Linnet was going to lose her mind after her first mouthful of mortal blood, and there was nothing anyone could do. Master would be disgusted with her. Very fucking well.

The vixen composed herself in a duelist's posture, and licked her fangs clean.

“Yes." She whispered redly.

The magus ducked her kick, sprang back to gather the tension again but felt it snap early when the vixen's teeth wrapped around his throat and tore. Linnet had to close her eyes against the spray of blood. Another of the does toppled, crimson stains all down the white blanket of her naked fur. Grass caught a few wild punches, then grunted as the sister kicked out and snapped his leg at the knee. Another shriek.

The Verse of Grass reeled, stumbled, hooves clicking on the stone. He snarled, and Linnet felt a few snaps of tension before she could feel her flesh being curled off of her, split and yanked apart by the passage of invisible crossbow bolts. She swayed bleeding in the dark, confusing him, working his attention from one side and then the other before testing him with a gnash of her jaws.

Each wound she dealt him sprang onto his servants like the mad slash of a painter's brush, ruining their immaculate pelts, tearing at their wholesome bodies and shattering their young, healthy bones. There was supposed to be pity in her, but Linnet could not find it now– she was lost in the pleasure of her violence, and the vampire inside her followed suit. They stumbled drunkenly together through the blood-fog, their twin muzzles fresh with praise for all creation, singing that ancient killing hymn that is native to the hearts of all such immortal monsters. She came to herself crouching on his shoulders, claws pulling his throat open from the front when the stag's voice rang like thunder.

“ENOUGH!" he cried, and a great will plucked her from his shoulders and slammed her to the stone. She lay heaving and dazed, drunkenly peering up at the moon as the world spun faster and faster on its new insane axis. “Enough, you fucking flea! You cocksucking insect!"

The stag's eyes were at last filled with it, the sweetest sight, the blazing life-ending fear that steers fleeing rabbits into tunnels with no exit, and traps feral mice under the gaze of feral cats. A hideous force was crushing her to the stone, but Linnet did not care- she could see and smell all the pleasures of the night, now. She was burning to have them, so she watched the wild face of the stag as it came into view, staring unblinking into his eyes and drinking every quivering saccade like communion wine.

He snarled, arm out, focusing everything he had into his Art to keep her imprisoned. The stag stalked over to her, robe slashed and torn to tatters, his own perfect body heaving with breath and effort now, glittering with starlit sweat. He plucked her from the stone and held her up to the moon, hoof-tipped fingers crushing her throat. “That's… just… fine…" he panted into her face and tried to compose himself. He swallowed. Petals were drifting down from his crown of flowers.

“You crazy fox bitch," he snarled, when he had mastered himself. “You think this is all I have? I'm a disciple of the Verse of Spring! I could have a thousand of these wound-takers, ten thousand, I could have that whole village for all you know! At first I was entertained--" He squeezed her throat, and the force threatened to snap her spine. Sill she stared into those eyes, pleasured and comforted by the terror that paced in the ring of his florid irises. “… But now you're wasting my fucking time!"

Grass spit on the vixen's face, shaking her. “You've wasted your time, too. You've wasted their lives. Is that what you wanted, you Red whore? You wasted your life, and then you wasted your death!" He snapped his free hoof now, and a long holly stake sprang into it from nothing, fire-hardened point shining in the moonlight. “When you get to that Red Hell, or wherever you zealot sadists go, you tell them the Verse of Grass is sending their whole fucking church after you."

She dangled limp in the spring breeze. Smelled the flowers, smelled the blood, felt the vampiric fear boiling at the point of that stake as he pressed it just under her left breast. In a moment he would ram it clean through her heart, and then he could do whatever else was necessary for her destruction. She could feel the faint burning of the cross around her neck.

A little bit of clarity returned to Sister Linnet in that moment, and she turned her gaze from the stag's eyes to the lonely moon. Her throat moved and the Verse of Grass hesitated. She murmured again.

“What?" He said, unclenching his hoof just a little.

Some instinct told her to lift her arm as she relaxed in his grip and said “There is nothing wasted in this world. Not even pain."

Something hard clapped into her paw and the magic of it thrilled up her arm. The sword of the Master, which is called Elil, Enemy, Sword of the Dead had come to her from the empty night. She spun it in an instant and drove it like a viper fang past the stag's collarbone. He gasped, wounded for the first time in a decade, and dropped her as she staggered back. First there was confusion in his eyes, and then there was nothing. A chill wind blew.

Linnet lay on the stone of the tower, heaving softly. She could hear the sudden frantic, panicked sobbing of the one remaining doe as she broke free of the magus' tether. There was a rustling as Sully slipped his silver bond and knelt next to the sacrificial doe, trying fruitlessly to comfort her. Linnet closed her eyes. She felt a dark presence loom over her. “Master." She said, breathing hard. “I did it."

“Yes." Came the reply.

She lay in thought a while, dizzy with the smell of blood now that the danger had passed. The fight had taken everything out of her, and now she couldn't get up, even for her urge to feed. She wanted to lay in the moonlight and rest. Then a thought occurred. His sword. He'd been there, watching her struggle. Some part of her was angry with the realization, but the fact remained: when she'd needed him most, there he was.

When Linnet finally sat up to talk, she saw his long, dark wing draped across the naked forms of Sully and the weeping doe. Sully was reaching up to touch the Master's face with one webbed paw. “Where have you been…?" he breathed, anger and disbelief and relief all mixing in his voice. “All these years, why now? Why come back to me now?"

The vampire said nothing. He merely held the two, and the crosses and chains that bound his body smoked faintly in the cold night air.

***

They pushed through the snow-covered fields in a steady march, the vampire and his fledgling. Unbothered by the cold, they came at last to the hill overlooking their monastery. The question had been burning her like a holy symbol since they'd made their departure from Rafford's villa, but now that they were home, the time to ask it was rapidly running out.

“Master." She said as he started down the hill. “Those women, the other night. At the villa…"

He turned, and gave her his cool, dark regard.

“I killed them. Drank their blood."

“You were ready." He said simply.

“To kill inn—" But he cut her off with a look, and she fell silent. A few instants of lonely night passed.

“Ready to drink. Killing magi… difficult. Innocents bound up in Art- very little frees them. Hard to kill magus, if many thralls. Elil kills when only few remain."

Sister Linnet gripped the sleeve of her robe. “And the thralls? What becomes of them?"

The good father was silent again, and Linnet had begun to think he would not answer her when his raspy voice sounded quietly with the winter wind. “Taking on others' pain… Holy act, if unintentional. Come again to the world, maybe."

It was the most she'd ever gotten in answer to her questions, and though there were others, she did not feel the need to ask. They made their way to the warmth of the monastery, greeted the sister at the gate, walked down the profane path and into the basement.

Sister Linnet thought of many things as she clamored back into her coffin at last and shut the lid over herself. She was thinking still when she drifted off to sleep as the sun rose, but for the first night in what felt like a long time, she was totally untroubled by dreams.