To Dream of Darkness II - Ch 21
#1 of To Dream of Darkness, Part II
To Dream of Darkness - Part 2
A story by DoggyStyle57
Chapter 21, Written January 2012
Continued from Chapter 20, here: http://www.sofurry.com/page/323034/user
Chapter 1 of this story is found here: http://www.sofurry.com/?pid=317962
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To Dream of Darkness
A story by DoggyStyle57
Chapter 21, Written January 2012
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Chapter 21 - Death in the dark
Lady Portia finally managed to remove the wards protecting the area near the rear cellar door. She double-checked to make sure the wards were gone, and then used a portal to pass through the hole she had created in the mansion's outer defenses, and into the locked cellar below the townhouse.
The darkened room was filled with a sickening stench. It was absolutely dark in the cellar, with not the faintest glimmer of light showing anywhere. The canine mage touched her left wrist, causing one of her swords to appear in her right hand, and she enflamed its blade, to give her light, as well as a ready defense.
She was in a small room, whose windows were painted over on the inside with what looked like lead paint. From the outside, the windows had merely looked darkly reflective, as one would expect for an unused room with no lights lit. At one end of the room was a coal bin, well-filled, but heavily coated in grey dust. No one had taken coal from that bin in months. There were two other doors. One was ajar, and she could see that beyond it was a narrow flight of 'servant's stairs', that most likely led up to the rearmost rooms of the main floor of the townhouse, where she might expect the kitchen to be. The other door was closed, and its lock was sealed with a warding spell. But the door and wall itself had no protective magic. She opened another portal, and passed through the wall into the next room.
The stench here was worse, and she could immediately see why. On a pair of trestles near the door stood an open coffin, and within that coffin was the decaying, headless corpse of a black furred male in a navy officer's dress uniform. The three day old corpse of Sir Reginald was bloating, and stank like an open grave. Portia could detect no sense of presence from it, and when she poured a bit of holy water on the fur on the back of one of the corpse's hands, the water hissed and bubbled like acid, but the corpse remained inanimate. The mage looked at the severed neck, and satisfied herself that the cauterized wound showed no signs of regeneration. Just to be safe, she rested the flaming sword across the foot of the coffin, reached behind herself and took a mallet and a heavy wooden stake from a sheath on the back of her belt, and pinned the corpse into the coffin with a stake through the heart. The stink of escaping gas as his chest was penetrated was nauseating in the extreme. "You got that one, My Lady. But what else have we here?" she said, as she put the mallet back, and took up her sword again.
In the flickering light of her flaming blade, she could see three more coffins set on trestles, all open.
"Three more?" she said quietly. "But who is the fourth one for?"
She heard the faintest scrape of a foot on the dirt floor, and turned, to find her answer...
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Upstairs in the foyer, Amara and Sarina faced off against each other, the vampire with eyes glowing red, and Sarina with her own eyes glowing acid green.
"Is this the 'welcome' that you said I spurned, cousin? Not your parents welcoming me into their home, but you and your minions intending to turn me into one of you?" Sarina asked. She was interrupted by a loud crash from the cellars, like some large wooden furniture being shattered.
In the moment of her adversary's distraction, Amara grabbed a heavy metal coat tree with one hand, and threw it forcefully at Sarina.
Sarina spun around and held up her left hand, and halted the flying object in mid air with telekinesis. She then sent it whistling back at Amara, barely missing the vampire's head, and smashing into the railing of the foyer stairs that led to the second floor of the townhouse.
Amara hissed and grinned, saying, "You missed me, cousin! I am ever so much faster than before!"
Sarina's eyes glowed brightly, as she replied, "I hit what I was aiming at."
Amara turned her head to look, in time to see half a dozen shattered wooden spindles from the destroyed stair railing levitating from the wrecked staircase, and hurtling point first at her, like flying wooden stakes. She screamed and writhed to avoid them. Three struck her, but none pierced her heart. She yanked them out of her arm, thigh and abdomen with distain, as she glowered at Sarina, saying, "Nice try. But I still move too fast for you to get me that way, cousin. Can you move with equal speed?" She grabbed a broken section of the railing itself and hurled it at Sarina, the thick bar of wood flying sidewise across the short gap between them.
Sarina teleported out of harms way, and reappeared briefly behind Amara. Swiftly she touched her own hidden necklace, and then touched the steel chain of Amara's protective medallion, before teleporting back to where she had been now that the railing had smashed past that position and gone clattering down the hall. With one finger she touched her necklace again, saying, "Your 'protection' against me shall be your downfall. I will take that necklace now."
Amara's eyes bulged and she screamed briefly, as the steel chain around her neck rapidly began to shrink! She clawed with both hands at the cut developing in her neck, but it was too late. The steel chain inexorably constricted, losing none of its strength as its size diminished, until it was no larger in diameter than a ring for the smallest finger, whereupon her spine snapped, and her head and headless body fell to the ground, the head still staring with hatred at Sarina. The necklace and medallion became a silver charm on Sarina's necklace, which only she could see or touch.
Sarina incinerated Amara's head with a firebolt spell, and using her dagger she cut the heart from the body, incinerating that as well, to be certain Amara would not resurrect. "The rest can wait for the police, as proof of the bounty," she said to herself.
"You have killed her, I see," said Lady Portia from behind Sarina. Her shirt was ripped, and she seemed very tired. She held one flaming sword as a torch, for light. "I found Sir Reginald's corpse, which definitely was a vampire's remains. And there was another vampire in the basement, shielded from mind detection. It snuck up on me, and gave me quite a fight. It even threw a coffin at me. But look who I found, down there in the cellar."
"Sarina? Oh my child! We were so wrong about you!" wailed Lady Pennington. "My poor, poor Amara! She sent for me, and asked me to come here to pray for Sir Reginald's soul with her this evening. But when I arrived, she locked me in a horrible, dark and stinking room with his corpse, saying she was going to turn you into a vampire, and then force you to do it to me and then force me to kill my dear Thomas, and turn him into a vampire as well! She told me that their house girl was bitten by a vampire over a month ago, and then the girl then infected Sir Reginald, and Sir Reginald infected Amara. Oh, my child, she wanted our entire family to become vampires, with her as our queen!"
The gentlewoman sobbed and reached out to Sarina as if wanting to hug her, saying, "But it is over now, my child. Now we can put this behind us, and be a family once more."
Sarina stepped back a pace, asking, "Lady Pennington? Why can I not read your surface thoughts? I would expect Lady Portia's mental defenses to keep me out, but you are no mage, my Lady."
Lady Pennington paused, and then said, "Why? That would be because I borrowed my husband's protective medallion before I came here - the one that you made for him. After all, we believed still that you were a vampire, and he was safely under police protection. Why do you recoil from me, my beloved niece? All is forgiven, and I apologize for ever doubting you."
Sarina looked relieved, and accepted the hug, saying, "How will we tell your husband, my lady? He will be heartbroken that his only child is dead."
Lady Pennington nuzzled Sarina, and said, "There there. We will tell him together."
Sarina was about to speak again, when Lady Pennington suddenly bit her neck, and held Sarina's arms pinned to her sides to prevent her from gesturing to cast a spell. Sarina's vision swam as the sudden loss of blood made her woozy, and she fell to her knees. She could see Lady Portia and Lady Pennington standing over her, with their eyes glowing red.
Lady Portia stepped between Sarina and Lady Meghan, created a glowing barrier between them, and said, "The Turning doesn't take long, My Lady. You see, Lady Meghan was the vampire I found in the basement, and she bested me. Amara had already turned her, and now she has turned me. Soon you, too, will be one of us, and we will follow our Queen, Lady Meghan Pennington, and you or I shall induct her husband into the clan, as well. Do not fight it. Nothing can move through the wall of force between us. If you try to get past it to attack either of us, I will create more such barriers, and will defend with magic as strong as your own. You have no time to defeat us."
"Time enough, for this," Sarina replied. Kneeling, she drew her dagger and swiftly reversed it in her hand, before plunging it into her own heart, screaming as she did so.
"What?" Lady Portia cried, as she dropped her barrier, and reached for the dagger to pluck it out.
But the instant the barrier dropped, the dagger was not there, nor was there a wound in Sarina's chest, though a hole clearly pierced her blouse. A small blue sphere was visible in Sarina's left hand for a moment, before vanishing into her chest.
There was a thump behind Lady Portia, as Lady Pennington fell to the ground, with Sarina's dagger precisely piercing the vampire queen's chest.
As the canine mage turned to see what had happened to Lady Pennington, Sarina rose, no longer injured, and clapped both hands on the temples of Lady Portia's head, invoking an intense sleep spell.
===
The next thing that Lady Portia knew, she was choking on the most vile-tasting concoction that she could imagine. She spat it onto the bed beside her, and stained the sheets red with blood.
"Welcome back, Lady Portia," Sarina said.
"What... what happened? How did you fight off the turning? Where am I? Why am I alive, and unbound?" Lady Portia asked.
"You are alive because that cure you taught me does work. I used it to cure you. Lady Pennington is still cursed, but the cure may also work for her, if we get that really skilled healer mage that fixed your arm to her bedside in two more days, to cure a pierced heart when the cure takes effect," Sarina stated. She gestured to where Lady Pennington hung in mid air, suspended in a magical bubble of energy, while still pierced through the heart with the slender dagger, and its embedded wooden stake. "She has to wait, because she fed on you."
"But you... I saw you stab yourself in the heart. How did that dagger get into her heart instead, and how did you survive?" Lady Portia asked.
"I took a very large risk, there," Sarina said. "I staked everything on a hope that a direct wound to the heart isn't necessarily instantly fatal, for me. My mother was a Kitsune. Just before I stabbed myself, I tried for the first time to concentrate my life energy into a Kitsune ball. I wasn't at all sure it would work, but it did, and with my life energy out of my body, that gave me a few precious seconds between my heart being pierced, and death. It was enough time for me to be able to cast a dark combat spell, which inflicts an injury affecting my body onto someone else, while curing me. The dagger, and the wound, transferred to Lady Pennington, paralyzing her. Then I restored my life energy, reabsorbing my Kitsune ball. When that little miracle distracted you, I forced my way past your mental defenses, and made you sleep, until I could cure you."
"That still doesn't tell me how you resisted becoming a vampire yourself, or how you managed to create the cure potion," Lady Portia said.
"I knew I would be immune to a vampire's bite before she bit me," Sarina said. "You see, my soul is already damned. Before I came to this plane of existence, I murdered many people, in revenge for them killing my parents. I have also contracted with hell, to gain more magical power. But you won't remember that, I'm afraid, or think to ask it again. Sleep, and forget," she said, as she touched the canine mage's forehead, and sent her back to sleep, while erasing her memories of Sarina's confession.
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At midnight, the police found the two sleeping officers, and cautiously investigated the townhouse. Sarina met them at the door, with proof readily at hand that Amara and Sir Reginald had been vampires, and that she was not. She asked them to keep quiet on the discovery for two days, while she attempted to cure Lady Pennington and Lady Portia, whose only sin was to have been Amara's victims.
Two days later, a rather frantic Lord Pennington was reunited with his missing wife, who still needed to have bed rest for several days thereafter, while the healer mage continued to work on her. Lord Pennington was told the sad news that his daughter and son in law had been vampires, and were slain, after trying to turn Lady Pennington into a vampire as well. Once Lady Pennington was well enough, a small private funeral was held, and the remains of Amara and Sir Reginald were carefully buried on consecrated ground, staked through where their hearts belonged, and with a silver crucifix buried just above their coffins, to insure they could never again rise to harm anyone.
Sarina and Lady Portia collected the bounty on four vampires, as the police gave them credit not only for slaying Sir Reginald and Amara, but also for curing Lady Portia and Lady Pennington of vampirism. They could find no trace at all of the vampire girl that the elemental had incinerated. Not even a single flake of ash had remained of her.
Sarina's name was cleared, and she re-opened her shop. Word soon got out that there was another powerful mage in the city - one that was capable of slaying vampires, and also of curing them. Her business was brisk.
For a while, Sarina's life was peaceful, interrupted only by an occasional hunt for a vampire or werewolf. She lived with the Penningtons, and took the place of their departed daughter in their hearts. But her peace was not to last...