“I change my mind. We cannot leave just her alone here. I know the others will take advantage of her.”
Mr. Třínožka emerged from the library and began scaling the staircase with his eight enormous legs.
“Not on my watch! Not no way, not no how,” he grumbled, bypassing Valek on the top stair and standing readily in front of the master bedroom door. “You see now, Valek, I’d never let anything happen to our girl! You can count on me!” His massive, knobbed mustache ruffled.
“Us,” Edwin said valiantly as he also began to ascend the staircase from the foyer.
Valek looked down to Sarah once more. Sarah nodded at him.
We have to go without her
, the Witch thought at him.
You have two choices. If she comes with us, she will die quicker than if she is left here without you. It’s up to you. How much time do you think she’ll last in your presence?
Valek narrowed his eyes at her, but made a fast decision. “Spider, you must do me an additional favor as well.” Valek stepped once toward him.
“Anything.”
“You mustn’t let Charlotte follow us. Please. No matter how much she begs you, which she will. No matter how much she…cries.” Valek fought his own sadness and reservation, his fists clenching at his sides. “You cannot.”
Mr. Třínožka lifted his two front, right hands. “Not a problem, Valek. She’s under my watch now.”
Valek heard Charlotte begin to stir again, toss in the bed, behind the closed doors. She was already waking up.
“You’d better go.” The Spider’s words came out somberly this time. “I’ll take care of her. I swear it.”
Valek only looked at him, unknowing of what to say next.
“You will return shortly,” he continued, his voice low and warm. “And when you do, she’ll be here. Waiting for you in better condition than what you’ve left her in.”
Valek smiled at him, nodding once, before descending the staircase. His gait to the front door was slow. All he could think about was the grim possibilities he faced by doing this. He pulled a golden ring out from under his shirt, strung there on a pewter chain. He had been carrying it like that for the last few months.
“Watch over us, Andela,” he whispered and tucked it back inside his shirt.
“Valek, we
have
to leave now. Charlotte will wake up any minute,” Sarah pleaded.
Valek turned to look behind himself, one last time up the staircase.
They would succeed
, he assured, mostly to Charlotte, who slumbered a story above. He had no other choice but to find the elders and achieve a cure. “Thank you,” he offered up to Mr. Třínožka and Edwin. He stepped over the threshold and out into the night, closing the door behind him.
Walking away from that house felt so wrong, as though he would never see it again. But he saw how Charlotte rolled in pain every night—saw how she suffered. With so much danger awaiting the two of them, Charlotte needed to be at full health, if he didn’t want to risk losing her again.
“I’m not happy about leaving her either, Valek. Do you think I
want
to leave the only family I’ve ever known? The only one who’s ever treated me like a friend and not a slave? It hurts just the same.” She threw one end of her scarf over her shoulder. Afraid of actually becoming emotional, Valek couldn’t respond to her. He swallowed his pain and continued stoically down the footpath.
Sarah and Valek walked silently next to each other for the last time through the empty Occult Square. He listened to Sarah’s laced, leather boots as she trudged through the packed snow. There was a rustling sound down a dark alley, between shops, and the smashing of what sounded like a tin trash can and a hiss. A feline Phaser chasing dinner. The sky since opened up and small flurries once again began to fall over the enchanted city. It was a peaceful wonderland, in contrast to the storm revolving within him. Valek noticed the little Witch walking too silently next to him again. She was only this quiet when something was severely bothering her. She wiped a few sparkling tears away from her high cheekbones.
“So, where exactly are we headed now?” he asked with a jagged, pained smile. It was his effort to distract her. “Are we marching our path to Abelim?”
“Nope! The note gave me some inspiration.” She grinned wickedly. “It told us to travel on
hoof and spell
. Well, you’ve got spell.” She indicated herself. “Now, we need hoof.”
The two neared the town stables that sat at the very end of the square, just before where the residential distract began. Valek could hear the horses moving around inside, their hooves crunching in the fodder. Sarah rounded the front of the stable, the large, wooden doors creaking as she opened them.
“What are we doing?” Valek moved through the snow to her side.
The stable smelled like cut hay and something foul. It was encased in darkness until she magically illuminated the candle within the little glass jar that hung from the center of the wooden beams. There were five different enclosures, with a horse in each. One of them, a mare with a jet-black coat and a long, unruly mane, eyed Valek, whinnying and backing up within her stall. She began to rear and kick, screeching louder.
“She’s afraid of you,” Sarah mused.
“Rightfully so. What are we doing in here?” Valek asked again.
“You’re not going to approve,” she warned him, crossing her arms over her chest.
She walked over to the startled horse, reaching deep within her apron pocket, and pulled out a sugar cube. She hushed the animal, holding the treat out to it. “There, there.”
Valek stayed as still as he possibly could, and the horse calmed after a few moments. It ate from the palm of Sarah’s hand as she reached up with her other hand to stroke her nose.
“That’s better.” She giggled.
“You want to steal a horse?” Valek snorted. “Fine. Why would I not approve?”
“I want to steal two horses,” she explained and spun around to face him. “Two
Vampire
horses.” Her lips formed into the wickedest smile.
Realization smacked him hard across the face. Valek backed away from her. “No. No. No.” He shook his head. “Do you know how reckless that is? It’s positively the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. What if they run? There will be two Demon horses terrorizing Europe! Animals are uncontrollable. Unpredictable.”
“Valek,” Sarah pleaded. “Just hear me out. We’ll get where we are going faster. You’ll get back to Charlotte faster. And they’ll be indestructible. We can run for days.”
“Terrific plan. Except you’re forgetting one thing.” He lifted his finger to her. “How are we going to run for
days
, when you’re dealing with one Vampire and two of his damned horses?”
Sarah’s grin grew twice its size. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out two syringes and two vials filled with a bluish, blackish liquid.
Valek recognized what it was instantly. “Fae blood?”
“Yep!” Sarah said triumphantly and pulled out another jug full of the stuff.
“How did you acquire so much of it?”
“Went hunting…just like you do.” She smiled and tucked it back away. “I trust you still have enough in your bloodstream for now. I’ll just save this for a sunny day. Now, change them.”
Valek looked toward the large animals in disgust and loosened his ascot. His stomach bubbled. He had never taken blood from a horse before. There had been the occasional rat, but that was only when he had been particularly desperate. As he watched the animal buck and rear in the stall in reaction to him being there, he imagined it wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to do. Animals had a keen intuition. They knew when they were going to die. They knew what was going to do it, and how. The horse watched his movements with fevered eyes as it bucked and whinnied again.
“Quickly! Someone’s going to hear all of this commotion. We have to move fast,” Sarah whispered, peering over her shoulder.
Valek swallowed and moved slowly toward the horse with his hands up in an effort to make peace with her. He hushed her. Nothing worked. The animal continued to rear, whinnying as it tried desperately to kick out the back wall of the stable.
“Now, Valek! Attack it!”
Valek lunged for the animal, wrapping his arms around its massive neck to try and get a lock on it. The other horse in the next stall screeched and thrashed harder. Valek sank his teeth into the first horse, the unappealing ichor seeping down his gullet. He winced, noting the thicker, drier texture of it. The nutty aftertaste. Gamy. It was revolting, but he continued to drink as the animal’s massive heart slowed and slowed. It finally stopped bucking, and he released it, gently helping the beast lower itself into the hay.
It tucked its hooves underneath its body, making slight noises as its round, shiny eyes blinked heavily. Valek helped to keep its head up, patting it on the nose.
“It will be all right.” He hushed it. “It’s going to be okay.” He patted the side of its jaw.
Sarah grunted and crossed her arms over her chest. “Take your time. Great idea! You know, I’ve honestly never met a humanitarian Vampire before.”
“Sarah, if I do not keep the animal awake, it might die, and you’ll have to come up with an alternate plan. Let me do this my way,” Valek argued before he bit down on his wrist, and watched the blood slide from the puncture wounds down his arm. He held his wrist up to the horse, but it only turned its massive face away.
“Well, you can lead a horse to blood….” Sarah chided.
“Funny.”
Valek was well aware they were running out of time. The longer he remained away, the longer Charlotte was in grave danger. So many obstacles. So many enemies. Valek gripped the horse’s jaw and forcefully propped it open as it struggled against him. Such a keen intuition, he thought again. He bit down on his free wrist one more time, as the wound had already closed, and quickly ran it across the horse’s tongue. It ripped itself out of Valek’s grip, whinnying again, as it rolled onto its side, shoving its hooves against the stable wall.
“What’s happening now?” Sarah approached slowly, her eyes fixated on the suffering animal. Valek heard how bad she felt for it, but this had been her decision.
“It is dying. This is what happens. They suffer. They die. And then they are reborn.” He recalled quietly his own agonizing transformation. The feeling of going under. Drowning. The eternal burning, as though he had walked straight through hell and come out on the other side, a new being. It had seemed to last for lifetimes before he’d opened his newborn eyes to a completely different reality than the one he used to know as a human. But that was decades ago.
“Quickly, while she is changing—do the other one.” Sarah pointed to the second horse.
Valek walked into the other stable while Sarah lay in the hay with the first dying animal. She stroked her massive nose and hushed her tenderly.
“Careful,” Valek warned her. “When they are new, they won’t know the difference between magic and mortal. Living is living. Blood is blood.”
Sarah slowly and cautiously moved away.
Valek drained the other animal, feeling the massive pulse in its neck throb against his lips. The taste was just as gamy and unpleasant as the first had been, but this feeling against his mouth drove him crazy. He heard Sarah’s voice from somewhere behind him, calling for him to stop and he did, quickly feeding the animal from himself and allowing it to make its transformation as the first had done.
From somewhere close outside the stable door, Valek’s ears pricked with the sounds of footsteps. Someone was coming. He turned to look at Sarah, who was already staring wide-eyed at him.
“When will they be ready?” She looked to the first horse that had grown completely still in the stall next to her. The second one continued to thrash and cry.
Valek stood, monitoring both of the animals as well, though he continued to tune in to each pursuing footfall. “Every experience is different. Depending on their strength, their vitality. It could be minutes. It could be hours,” he explained. “It could be days.”
“
Days?
We don’t have
days!
”
The footsteps stopped, sounding to him like whomever they belonged to stood just outside the barn doors. Valek could hear Sarah’s pulse intensify. Quickly, he wrapped her up in one of his arms. “Be silent,” he whispered and clawed up one of the barn walls. In an instant, he found a shadowed corner between a thick rafter and the barn ceiling. Valek crouched there among the cobwebs with the Witch still tucked under his arm. Her gaze burned into the side of his face, but his focus remained on the front doors. “Hush,” he reminded her.
The doors swung open as one of the Trolls from the bar fight the night before staggered in, clearly suffering from a recent intake of too much ale. He snorted, and spat the contents into a pile of hay.
“Come on, Beta,” he grunted, shuffling forward through the mess. “Time ta eat.”
Valek couldn’t see the horse as he spoke to it. He wondered if she was still seemingly lifeless on the ground. A whimper answered that question, followed by what sounded like a hoof carelessly brushing through the dry grass. Valek watched the Troll approach the stable door.
“That’s it, girl. How are ya today?” he offered soothingly. Another small whinny was followed by a clomp against the wood. Valek cringed, wanting to look away, though he couldn’t, as the Troll slowly stretched his hand out to pet the animal.
And then it happened. The Troll cried out in horror as Valek heard Beta thrash and howl. He could make out the dark edge of her nose as she lunged forward, the door crushing into splinters beneath all of her weight. She had the Troll in her jaws as he garbled and screamed, collapsing to his knees and clawing against the floorboards in an effort to escape. But it was no use as the large animal proceeded to drag him backward into the hay. Sarah shuddered against Valek at the tearing sounds of the Troll’s nails as he continued to wail. It was followed by the sick sound of unseen bones crunching, another horrified bellow, until nothing but the distinctive gulping and slurping that Valek recognized all too easily.
He was just about to jump from the rafter beam, until another stable wall splintered under the impact of something, followed by a second sound of gulping. He instantly recognized that the other horse had come to as well and was now sharing the Troll for supper.