Rancor: Vampyre Hunter (Rancor Chronicles) (7 page)

“Have you not heard a lyre before?” she inquired.

“I ’ave noy. ’Ow does it work?”

But before she could explain, a tall, wide fellow stepped between them and the musician. He glared with blue eyes, chest heaving and muscles flexed. He stood with no more than a hair’s width between himself and the Wulfsign–a challenge thrown for all to witness. When he spoke his voice was harsh and controlled.

“We do not want your kind ’ere.”

Rancor reached out to bring Ariana safely behind him. He met the gaze head on, without blinking, but when he spoke he did so calmly. There was even a smile on his lips.

“I mean noy disrespect, but I cannoy ’elp da circumstance o’ my birth any more dan ya.”

“I was born English by the will of God.” The burly fellow did not back down. Several others stood behind him, urging him on.

Rancor looked pensive. “Den per’aps ya would share your noble position with ma by allowing ma a life o’ peace.”

Silence. Both men glared at one another. Finally the burly fellow laughed, and patting Rancor on the shoulder, he said, “He’s all right! This newcomer is all right!”

The crowd dispersed and Rancor, as though nothing had happened, turned to Ariana and said, “A lyre ya say?”

“Were you afraid you could not best him?” she asked, though she knew better.

Rancor threw a coin to the minstrel and said, “Dere is noy honor returning ta a life I ’ave chosen ta leave.”

Ariana could not help herself. Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed his cheek and said, “Wait here. I’ll gather what we need from the market.”

“I shall way,” he said caressing the moist spot on his face. He watched after her as she walked off into the crowd. He did not know exactly the words to describe the emotions he felt when with her. It was unlike anything he had known. His heart fluttered, his lips smiled and there was emptiness in his chest whenever she was away. Was it love?

“What else could it be?” asked a man beside him.

“Pardon?” Rancor said, and turned to face a tall, thin man.

“Your bravado: I witnessed everything. You are the bravest man I have ever met. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Shay Jackson.” The tall man bowed. He was pale and quite sickly-looking. It was as if he had not eaten in weeks.

“Ya met well, friend. May I ask, and forgive ma impudence, if ya be down on ya luck?”

Ariana returned and said to the merchant, “Would you excuse us? I must speak with my hired hand a moment.”

They walked away from the stranger. When next Ariana spoke, she whispered, “What do you know of this man? I have heard there was a murder in the hamlet last night. How do we not know–”

“Ariana! T’was noy a murder, but a wulf attack. Ya cannot fault dis man way superstition. Look o’ ’im. ’E’s pale and does noy look like ’e’s eaten in days.” Rancor picked her up and twirled her in the air. “I ’ave found ma chance ta show true honor! Da merchant needs our aid, and I know we ’ave noy food ta spare, but I will cut me own rations in ’alf–”

Ariana smiled. “Speak no more. You may welcome this stranger, but not to my home. Welcome him to our home. He will take your lodgings in the barn–”

“And I?”

“You will sleep in the house. With me. I am, after all, your angel.”

Rancor turned back to the merchant, who asked, “And who might this vision be?”

“This is Alexandria,” Rellik answered coldly, no longer so young, nor so innocent.

Alix added to Rellik’s introduction: “And this is Betty.”

Rellik didn’t turn to face them, not even when Shay stepped around him.

“I am Shay. Shay Jackson.” He beamed his pearly whites and a sparkle shimmered from his sunken, brown eyes. “Could one of you lovely ladies please show me to my history class? A Mr. Pausron, it is.”

Rellik cringed at the thought of Shay taking the same class as they were.

“That’s my class!” Betty said. “I’ll show you where it is.” Wrapping her arm around his, she gave Alix a strange glance. Alix didn’t tag along.

Shay spoke a few incoherent words as they departed from the alcove. Rellik, with his back to Alix, smiled for the first time in centuries.

“Rellik?” Alix asked with a slight quiver in her voice. “Do you want me to walk you to class?”

Her voice sang in his ears more beautifully than a chorus of songbirds. Her kindness hadn’t changed in a millennium, and Rellik didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her twice.

Rancor finished lighting the fire and walked to Ariana. He smiled, looked deeply into her eyes, and pulled her close to him. He thought briefly of his brother, of the love that Kendil had said he would find. Slipping a ring from his finger, he said, “Ya should ’ave dis.”

As he handed her the wedding band Kendil had given him, he met her curious eyes.

“What be this?” she asked.

“’Tis ma soul, Ariana. Wear it only if ya want it.”

She took it and smiled, leaning to him and kissing him deeply. As she took his hand in hers, Ariana led him toward the bedroom. Rancor gently pulled her back.

“Noy, Ariana.”

“‘Tis all right. I love you.”

“And I ya more than life itself. ’Tis why I wish ta wed ya first.”

She handed him back his band and said, “Then give this to me that day, Rancor. Give me your soul only when I can give you mine.”

He took it back and vowed by his honor they soon would wed. Gently kissing her he praised the heavens for his good fortune. Knowing there would never be a time when he didn’t need her, when his heart didn’t feel empty without her.

“No. I can find it myself,” Rellik answered, the words sounding foreign against the love he still felt for her. He wanted to take Alix’s hand, to pull her close, and never let go. But as his vision hit the ground he walked past her, uncertain why he felt so afraid to open his soul once again.

“Evil, I once thought, was a birthright passed on in the same way as the color of one’s eyes. As I grew from an infant to a man I believed that my clan was evil, and, because I was one of them, so must I also be. After all, we fought together, we killed together, and we conquered together. What I could not understand, however, was why no one but I saw our bane.

“When I left the Alsandair I feared their lessons would never leave me, and that I would always be tempted into selfishness. What confused me was the virtue left in me by my true bloodline, the Wulfsign, a clan I never even knew.

“Often I contemplate: Is evil an ailment of ignorance, or a genetic disposition from which there is no escape?”

-Wulfsign

CHAPTER ELEVEN

L
ittle more than two years had passed since Sam last stepped inside Conway Groceries. Just as he’d expected, the place was in desperate need of a harsh cleaning and restocking. He arrived early in the morning, even though his head pounded with a familiar beat and his dry throat pleaded for quenching. He’d neglected his health to ensure the store would be ready for reopening by midafternoon. But by late afternoon the shelves still had the same dust blanket, the refrigerators still had the same mildew, and his new boxes of stock still remained unopened.

The only thing that Sam had found it in himself to do was to flip his
Closed
sign to the
Open
side.

“Open for what?” he said aloud, knowing how much rode on this foolhardy decision of his. He wished he hadn’t mentioned anything to Alexandria before he had found success. As though his wife were there in the grocery store with him, he said, “Trina, I so need you now.”

He collapsed on an unopened crate as though his strength rode on his whispered breath. Sinking his solemn face into his dry palms, he prayed his daughter could forgive him twice.

At least he recalled where he had stashed his whiskey.

The faint sound of the door opening and the once-common chime of the bell hadn’t reached his ears. But, a few seconds later when footsteps neared, he called out, “I’m sorry. Store’s closed.”

“I still expect to get paid,” Rellik’s raspy voice growled, as his footsteps came to a halt.

Sam could have sworn he heard something snap deep within himself. He wasn’t sure why that remark had bothered him so much, but as he rose to tower over the much shorter young man, his rage grew beyond control. He felt his face blush a painful crimson. When the young man met his angry stare head on with equal force, the show of contention only infuriated him more. Sam tightened his hands into clenched fists and opened them fast. He repeated this gesture several times.

“Listen to me and you listen good,” Sam whispered beneath his harsh breath. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you work for me and you will address me with respect!”

“If you do not open the store, then I work for no one.”

Sam couldn’t figure out why the anger in him burned, but the longer he stared at the teen the more he hated him. It was irrational and he knew that. Yet it was as if he had stepped out of himself and watched helplessly as the fury took over. Sam rammed his index finger into Rellik’s chest and pushed.

“Get out. Out of my store! And out of my home! I don’t know what kind of mind games you play, but they end right here!”

Rellik knew it would be best to leave. He wasn’t afraid. After all, Sam was only mortal, and should he choose to strike, he could easily be subdued. But Sam’s suffering was not unlike looking into a mirror image, a reflection of one who has lost a loved one. Rellik had seen the urn of ashes beneath the portrait when he’d been in the den for his interview. He found it discomfiting to watch someone else handle his loss in the same manner as he did: by driving those who might care for him as far away as possible.

Yet, even in his worst time of despair, Rancor had found kindness. This mortal did not have long to wait until his life would end. Rellik knew that, without compassion, Sam would waste away his remaining days.

“Please forgive my impudence. I meant you no disrespect. If you wish me to depart, then I shall. But from the look of your store, it appears you are in great need of aid.” His hands made a sweeping motion at the scattered boxes.

“Would you listen to yourself? Even your apology sounds condescending! You have no right to judge me! You don’t know what I lost!”

Rellik shook his head and turned toward the door. Self-pity had taken too strong a hold over Sam for reason to reach him.

Rancor sat in a dark, musty tavern, absently looking about himself, slamming back drink after drink. He’d left Ariana alone with Shay, knowing it best not to share this night’s thoughts with either mortal. Tonight he needed to forget the day’s events, and he would, if only alcohol would steal his inhibitions as it had everyone else’s. He questioned why the gods allowed mortals a release from their reality, while they damned him to wallow in confusion without reprieve.

He knew he was avoiding the truth about what troubled him. On his way to the tavern, while walking through the woods, he had run into the corpse of a man killed by supernatural means. Rancor’s temples pounded as he recalled the grotesque body. Claw marks raked down his chest, and a creature had feasted upon the legs and stomach.

He would have guessed it was a werewulf, but after scanning the corpse, he’d found two tiny bite-marks in the jugular. It was now clear that a vampyre was in the hamlet’s midst. Several other murders had already occurred, all bearing the wulf’s marks. Until tonight they hadn’t disturbed him all that much, but this one had occurred close to his home. The villagers thought it was the act of a mad wulf.

Rancor knew he had to stop transforming. He had no wish to be caught and falsely accused. He wondered if all the corpses had a hidden vampyre’s trademark.

He sighed, glad that the merchant had stayed with Ariana. Should the vampyre strike there, frail as Shay might be, he could at least provide a diversion for Ariana to escape. She’d protected them by hanging wolfsbane on the door and crafting a knife from silver, just as the villagers had done. Had she known it was a vampyre, she would have donned a cross and refused to invite in any stranger who happened by.

Rancor had once thought those measures enough to protect himself.

He now had to accept, because of his own supernatural powers, that those superstitions were false prejudice. He was, after all, a werewulf and no wolfsbane harmed him. Neither did the full moon make him transform, nor had he ever desired to eat a man’s flesh. So how, then, could he believe that a cross or garlic would turn away a vampyre, or even that the beasts could not come out in the daylight? If the vampyre legends were as false as his own, and this vampyre had a taste for man, then these mortal villagers were as good as dead.

His own powers made him feel responsible for ending this demon’s terror. But, by making a life with Ariana, had he not chosen a life of peace and forsaken battle? Supernatural or not, was it not his duty to stop the carnage?

“I meet you well, friend,” a voice said.

Rancor glanced up to see a medium-sized young man smiling at him. He was pale, with long brown hair filled with mats. His dirty clothes looked well-traveled. When he sat he grunted, as if ending a long journey. Rancor would normally welcome the company, but tonight he had too much on his mind.

“Ya met well, but I fear solitude is ma companion tis night. Please forgive ma impudence.”

“My name is Rafgard–”

“Please, sir,” he tried to remain patient with this man, “forgive ma impudence. But . . . I have no need of company. Find yaself another table.”

Rafgard slowly inhaled a long breath of smoky air and sighed, smiling wide. “I am not the one you hunt, Rancor of the Wulfsign.”

Rancor sat up straight at the mention of his name.

“Don’t be so surprised that I know you. After all, when a man hangs on the gallows and doesn’t die, that legend spreads fast.”

Rancor laughed away his fear. “And woy would you think I was hunting you? Are ya hunting me?”

“I am not hunting you. Like you, I am vampyre hunting.”

“Per’aps a man as frail as yaself should consider a mead, instead.”

“I would, instead, care for a glass of milk. Even if it is from a goat.” Rafgard leaned back in his chair and stared, smiling all the while. He rested his hands on his empty, growling belly and asked with a sorrowful tone, “Are you curious why alcohol has no taste?”

“I t’would like the story,” Rancor replied without thinking, sounding much more eager than he would have liked.

“The alcohol is a toxin. A poison, if you will. Your body–our bodies–cannot be poisoned.”

“Do ya take ma for an ignorant fool? Do ya expect me ta believe ya noy the murderer?”

The barmaid came around with more mead, but this time Rancor declined. She shot him a scornful look. She glanced at Rafgard, who mouthed, “Milk.” Then the barmaid left the two immortals to stare at one another.

After some time had passed, Rafgard added, “What if I told you that I am a brother to the vampyre who murders so freely? And that I have come to help you fight him.”

“I would ask woy a man such as you would care.”

“I know the rules of your brethren, my friend. I also know the bane of mine. Regret is powerful, and in one who lives forever it is the worst curse of all. I think you may help me lift my curse, and teach me redemption.”

“How?”

“By teaching me how to be a good man again. I once was one–until someone made me this. The things I have done, the things I have lost, are simply too much for me to bear for eternity.”

“Do you truly believe that no one’s loss is equal to your own?” Rellik asked Sam. “Are you so lost in that demon’s drink that you believe the loss of your wife has earned you the pity of the world? My pity is extended to your daughter. For not only did she lose a mother, but a father as well.”

The mention of Alix seemed to release Sam from the grip of madness. His face softened and he slumped back down onto an unopened crate.

“I’m sorry, Rellik. I do need your help.”

Rellik nodded and walked back to the door. He turned the
Open
sign to read
Closed
, grabbed a broom, and set to work.