"Your Grace, I believe I have found the artefact you commissioned me to seek out. It was located in an ancient ruin in Romalia, in mountains infested with orcs, goblins and worse things besides. Still, with the application of sufficient golems, we managed to extract it, and are currently smuggling it north. With this in mind, I might hopefully request that upon delivery you will graciously hold up to your end of our agreement and release my children in the state we agreed: unharmed, still alive, untraumatised, uncoerced, without dark magics placed upon them and released in a way which does not put them in short or medium term danger. I would, with the greatest of respect, also ask that you recall your promise and that you will and have not taken any actions to endanger them in the past or in the future. Please don't drop them off a cliff onto spikes and say that you released them and that you did not harm them, like you did my wife."
– Found amongst blood-splattered papers in the de la Vallière library
…
Cattleya's grip was an iron vice around her forearm and heart.
Well, the heart bit wasn't literal. Her sister merely metaphorically had her heart in a claw-like hand, nails digging into the very core of her as if they were steel talons tearing open veins and rending arteries. But it certainly felt that way.
Cattleya. She was being controlled and... maybe had been all along. Louise couldn't trust her own sister. It was all wrong.
"Hey! What you…" Maggat got as far as saying, before an open-palmed slap from Cattleya tore his head from his shoulders. There were a few more screams and protests, cut short, and Louise felt every death of her minions as a tiny pulse in her head. Then Cattleya was moving, throwing her little sister over her shoulder like a rag doll in a surge of movement which showed no care whatsoever for the fact that Louise was clad in full plate armour.
All the ultimate lady of malevolent darkness could do was to try to tuck her legs in and avoid throwing up as she was carried off to only Founder knew where.
Hmm. Founder. Yes. That was a good idea. Louise started praying. Sure, she was technically a malevolent blight on the land, but it was in a good way! She was only doing it to restore the natural God-given order of things that put the blessed royalty on top! And Henrietta certainly hadn't fallen to Evil, which was the only circumstance where one was permitted to overthrow a ruling monarch – and only then to put a non-wicked blood relative on the throne! And though adultery was a sin, any small mistake that Henrietta might have made was far, far outweighed by the actions of the comte de Mott in that regard. And of the treacherous dog Wardes and the Madam de Montespan, that bi-... female dog.
So surely the Lord would listen to her prayer, because she wasn't bad.
Please. God. Save Cattleya. And her too. That would also be nice.
But there was no blinding light in the darkness, no forthcoming redemption. All there was for her was the rush through corridors and hallways as black as pitch, the air chilly, with the only sound in the air Cattleya's apologies and occasional 'mind your head'.
"A most cunning ploy, your evilness," Gnarl said in her mind. "Trick him into revealing the enthrallment, and then let her carry you to him. It'll be much faster, and if you set alight to her now, you wouldn't be able to get past the traps. Genius."
Traces of light beyond that from her eyes began to creep into her blurred surroundings, but above all the thing that told her that she was no longer in cramped corridors was the change in the sound. There was a hushed susurration which reminded her of cathedrals above all, the feeling and sound of a large space with people in it being very quiet.
Kind of... very quiet for people. The kind of quiet that even precluded breathing.
And then she was down onto the floor in a clatter of armour, and almost as quickly being pulled into a kneeling position by unyielding muscles. In the end of the complicated movement, she was upright, but her arms were behind her back in a position which could easily become painful.
There were other figures around her, in the shifting light of the magically glowing crystals positioned strategically around this... it looked somewhat like a cathedral, as she had suspected, but she had never seen a cathedral made out of this kind of dark stone. And she could see that the other figures around her, always standing just at the edge of pools of light as if they had been carefully positioned like manikins, all had glowing red eyes.
Though of course it was still Cattleya who was holding her in position. Even the apologies had stopped. Her anger was slowly and steadily burning away any shock or fear in her heart. How dare he? How dare he?
The central vault was far larger than it had any right to be. Through her shock, Louise couldn't see how it was meant to fit under this smallish island. So either it was under the lake entirely – and she didn't think Cattleya had taken her that deep – or it wasn't exactly in the real world. She was inclined towards the latter, if only because the walls were lined with basalt and she vaguely recalled from geology lessons that the estate was built on granite.
And her gauntlet was pulsing. Oh yes. It was pulsing like a heartbeat; a warm reminder of why she was here.
"Ah, great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter," a surprisingly pleasant and – dare she say it? – cheerful voice said. "So nice to see you in the flesh. I knew you'd come; you're very attached to your arm, aren't you? Ah ha."
…
Pale blue light flared in the darkness of the tomb. "You was a gonner there, Maggat," Scyl said, conversationally. "And you was nearly a double gonner. Your head rolled off down stairs, and I go, 'where is Maggat's head gone' and then Stink over there say 'oh look, he double-dead, baggsies on his loot' and then he help himself to your skull arm guards while you dead." The blue-skinned minion grinned maliciously. "He over there, in case you want to get them back," he added.
Pulling himself to his feet, Maggat worked his shoulders and glared over at the newer brown-skinned minion, who was turning decidedly beige. Stink began to unfasten the purloined equipment, but he was not quite fast enough to avoid having his neck broken by an irate Maggat, who was of the general opinion that what came around went around, often to someone else.
"No one touch my stuff unless I double-dead for sure," he growled, straining as he decapitated the dead minion and tossed the head to Scyl before recovering his possessions. "Give him a hurty neck when you bring him back, yeah?"
"That pretty hilarious, Maggat," Maxy said idly, eying up an expensive statue and the gems embedded in its eyes. "Silly, silly newbies. They not quite get how stuff works. Stupid ex-gobbos who not have to work together like we do last time we end up near vampire. Now, what we going to do?"
Maggat finished strapping on the equipment. "Maxy," he said, "when we get back, you got my full okay-ness to tie Stink down and tell him poetry 'bout… daffo-dils or singing birdies or something. Thanks to the overlady, I pick up what special word 'insubordination' mean because she use it a lot and let me tell you this, I not like it one bit when it done at me."
There was muttering from the other minions. The disproportionate level of punishment seemed to be stirring some hearts. Any muttering, however, was silenced when Igni ignited two fireballs and Fettid – still clad in a dress – produced a pair of cleavers from somewhere.
"Minionies who gets uppity when overlady in trouble might just have accident where I accidentally cut them into lots and lots of little bits and then throw the bits in the river so when the blues goes looking for them some of them might have been eaten and they'll be missing something forever," Fettid said in a sing-song voice.
"Right," Maggat said through gritted teeth, "I angry. I very, very angry. And neck still hurty. Vampire-sister of overlady in for whole lotta pain. But she also very fast very powerful vampire who take overlady, so we needs a plan because we gotta have overlady back safe."
"Yeah, we gotta," Maxy agreed. "If she die by accident, we probably end up with Bloody Duke, vampire who overlady-sister mention in charge of us 'cause I hear somepreeeetty bad-for-us stories 'bout him. And we just get away from eighty years of bloody vampires. I sure as blazes not going back."
"But we need plan," Maggat insisted.
"Oooh! Idea!" Igni contributed. "Blazes! We set vampies on fire! They weak against it. Simples."
There was general agreement that this was a good plan.
"What other weaknesses they have?" Maggat asked, pacing up and down, dragging his knuckles on the ground. "We have garlic? Steaks? No, raw steakies has blood in them, so make them better then. Oooh, we still got some silver in the loot sack we not give to overlady yet."
"I think vampies got another weakness," Maxy said, "from what I read. It sort of a met-a-weakness, which we use to kill 'em and not have all our blood taken which would hurt and might leave us double dead."
"It not natural, a minion who read," someone muttered. "Who you think you are, Gnarl?"
"Shut it, Bob," Maxy snapped. "You so stupid, you try to put out a fire with a torch because you hear phrase 'fight fire with fire' and you dumb as person who not speak so you not understand that it a meta-four-or-figure-of-speech. You so damn stupid, you not get that minions meant to serve overlord – or overlady – and smashy stuff and heads and if you too stupid, you stop it happen then. No, what I read in book on how to kill vampires when we trying to work out how to escape bloody vampire is that they all very melo-drama-tic what is a word which means they like to show off and they not act like minions. Like, what we do if we have prisoner tied up?"
There was a murmur of general discussion as the question was debated. A couple of brief scuffles broke out, before ceasing abruptly at Maggat's glare. "Bash 'em over head and bring life force to overlady," someone ventured, after a minute.
"Yep!" Maxy said cheerfully. "That because we best at what we do! We kill stuff good. Also stuff bad and stuff kinda mixed. But vampire, they like to go 'mwha ha ha, I so evil' and that have place, but vampire do it way more than even most tasteless of overlords. Overlords, they get that once you beat enemy in duel, you kills them. Vampires don't. So what I thinks, it likely that vampire tie down overlady and go 'mwha ha ha, this my evil plan' and then it likely to do something to show off. So I reckons she safe for moment, and we not need to go rushing in until we got all the silver decorations off the wall and can sharpens them and ties them to weapons and stuff like that. An' if our greenies can find a way into where overlady get taken, we can stabby-stab the vampire guardies sneaky-like and then we not double-die in horrific pain."
Maggat folded his arms. "That actually pretty good idea, 'specially cause it involve more looting," he said. "Next time, I not hit you so hard when you start poetry when you not allowed to. We is going to get her back," the senior brown minion said, through gritted teeth, "or my name not Maggat Thwacker."
…
Louise looked up, staring at the dramatic pool of light which had just appeared before her. In it there was a man, in a propped upright marble coffin. Pointed teeth smiled at her from an honest, trustworthy smile; red eyes gleamed from under brows which were worryingly similar to her father's. His hair was swept back into a widow's peak, and a long mantle was pinned over the top of clean, but out of date dress.
And protruding from his chest, stabbed through the heart was a pale-blue crystal. It seemed wreathed in red light, though something in Louise's mind told her that was just a minor madness, some extra sense detecting the raw evil pouring off the fragment of the tower heart.
Clearly that was because of the presence of the vampire and his dark magics, because she never normally felt that from the mostly-intact heart.
"Good evening... no, I do believe it is morning... to you," he said, staring down at her. "I would come to see you more closely, but at the moment, I am... aha... a trifle inconvenienced. Though you could come over to me, instead. Don't you have a kiss for your dear old grandfather?" He paused. "No? Pity. Still, it's nice to have family around, wouldn't you say? Do you mind if I call you 'granddaughter'? It's much easier all around if we don't have to say all those 'greats'. Very time wasting. But you can call me by all the greats. Because you know. That's what I am. Really, really great."
Louise tried to squirm, and failed. "Let her go!" she insisted.
"Ah ha. It is ironic, don't you think? You want me to let her go, so she'll let you go. But you know; the correct thing to do would be to obey one's elders and ancestors, and I am both." He smiled. "Cattleya is just being a good little girl, unlike your very naughty father. You like being a good little girl, don't you?"
"I do," her sister said from behind her, squeezing tighter around the plate.
"See! She doesn't want to be let go. I think what we both have to consider is who is acting in her best interests here." The duke dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "It's me. Not you."
The overlady stopped struggling then, not breathing for a moment. She let out the air in her lungs in an explosive exhalation. "Let go of my sister. And give me back the bit of my tower heart," she growled.
"Tssk,tssk, tssk. There you go again, trying to override your sister' s feelings. You can't control her her entire life, you know." The man paused. "Well, her entire unlife. Because, well, you know. Although she's not quite as utterly amazing at everything as me, she's still better than you. It's a vampire thing. Get it?"
Louise was of the opinion that she really wanted him to get 'it'. Where 'it' was 'set on fire'.
"But no, seriously? You want this crystal thing sticking out of my chest?" the vampire continued. "Take it. You're welcome to it. Feel free. In fact, given you are a dark lady, if you're open to an alliance, I'll let you take your sister with you as a mark of our cooperation." He grinned. "I promise I won't have her murder you in your sleep or stab you in the back. That'd be just terrible."
Louise blinked. Huh? Was he just... offering her an alliance and then saying he'd let Cattleya go freely with her. If she'd just take out the fragment of the tower heart... which was what she wanted to do anyway?
Wait, was everything going hazy and fuzzy? Yes, it was.
She did believe she was having a flashback.
"Louise," her father had said, looking serious. "When you get older, men might want you to... do things. Especially a certain kind of man. See, you'll be able to tell, because he'll want you to come closer and he'll say he wants you to remove something from him. He'll say it's a magic crystal and nothing bad can happen if you help him, but he's lying."
She had looked up at her father, wide-eyed. She really wanted to get back to playing with her dollies, especially the brave mage-knight her mother had got her, but her father had said that now she had a marriage arranged, there were important things she needed to do.
"It might sound like it couldn't hurt, or it'd be a good thing to do," he had continued. "Don't listen to men like that. They're a bad, bad men, and if you touch him, very very bad things will happen. Listen to me, Louise. This is vitally important, and you'll need to remember this, even if you are just six."
Louise blinked again, and she was back in her own normal-sized body. It was... rather less comfortable, all in all, because of the whole kneeling-with-her-arm-held-behind-her-back-by-her- vampire-sister-thing. Yep, that had certainly been a flashback. And... oooh. Was that what her father had been talking about? It all made much more sense.
"Uh," she said out loud, playing for time. "So... you mean you'll let me go..."
"Alive, unharmed, uninfluenced by vampire magic, and without any other negative status effects or other such things," Gnarl prompted.
"Alive and unharmed. And without any magic on me or things like that. And you'll let me take Cattleya and you promise not to control her anymore."
"Yep!"
Cattleya's grip on her arms loosened, and she managed to stand, rubbing her wrists. She took a step forward. "Okay. Alright. Okay." Louise took a deep breath. "But wh-what… um… well, hypothetically. What would you do if… if you were on fire!" The last words were shouted as she threw her hand out and silently thanked all that was holy that she'd spent that money over the last few months on books that taught how to cast the fire spell without chanting.
Admittedly, she had to be channelling the right 'dark emotions' to do it according to the book, but frankly that was a load of hogwash because she'd never had any problems doing it when she'd been practicing on the jester.
But as it stood, she hated her blood-sucking ancestor more than she'd hated anyone in the world before. Apart from... no, even including her treacherous dog of an ex-fiancé. And, my, were the fires burning bright, a pyre centred on the stone where the Bloody Duke had been staked. All around her vampires were screaming and recoiling, and Cattleya certainly had let go of her. Stomach muscles screaming, Louise very nearly managed to flip onto her feet, and only stumbled a little bit, plate clanking.
"Oh, you wicked little girl," she distinctly heard the Bloody Duke say from inside the pillar of flame. "So much hate! So much raw malignancy that you can casually throw off a dark spell like that." He sounded as if he was smiling. "You are a treat. And you did it right in the middle of conversation! How adorable! But can you put the fire out, so we can keep on talking? I can't see you when the fire's in the way."
Louise jabbed a finger at the pillar of flame, fresh pink flames already leaping to life on her palm. "That... that's not possible!"
"Look, if a ten-a-denier fire mage could have killed me like this, do you really think the first von Zerbst to try to kill me would have been failed, instead of being displayed in every town square in my lands?" Louis said cheerfully. "And let me tell you this, the family's been slack and let some lands escape, because I had to slice him pretty finely to allow each town square to have a slice. I stitched protective amulets against fire into my appendix before I became a vampire, because humans are pretty vulnerable to it too."
Louise let the fire die down, and picked up her staff from where she had dropped it, igniting the end with a muttered chant. "Gnarl," she muttered.
"Why, this is a vampire lord, who's staked into immobility, but is immune to damage," Gnarl said thoughtfully. "He will almost certainly have lesser vampires attack you, possibly while hurling dark spells at you, while you have to look for his weak point. That's how this kind of thing goes. And, your evilness, you did not believe that the comte de Mott would have a weak spot, and yet he did! My expertise on these things is unparalleled!"
Louise considered this advice. Well, she could try kneeing her ancestor in the groin. He was male, so it might work as well as it had on the comte de Mott. But wait, no; that flashback to her father's advice had said she wasn't meant to touch him.
Almost casually, she threw a ball of fire at a vampire dressed like a member of the lower nobility, who ran off screaming, igniting the dark hallway. She could fight off vampires for a while. Yes, that made sense. She could find his weakspot later – indeed, she already had suspicions - when she didn't have to watch her back for lesser vampires and her minions might have shown up.
But for now, they should keep away from her fire, and she could work out a way to free Cattleya and kill the other vampires. Yes. That made sense, she thought, as she threw a few more balls of fire into the panicking and scattering undead. This would have been so much harder if she hadn't learned all these fire spells and...
"Oh, you're being tedious," the Bloody Duke said, not a hair out of place. "Those of you too stupid to get out of the way of my granddaughter, burn for my amusement. Cattleya. Kill her. Also for my amusement. "
...
The Countess Marie de la Tolou was not actually a countess, nor was she actually from Tolou, but the weak human cattle were impressed by such things and so she had used that name for almost a decade. Who cared that she had been a butcher's daughter before she had been turned into a vampire by a handsome young man?
But then she had felt a calling in her blood, and so she had summoned her thralls – including her dreadful father who had never shown her the respect she had deserved – and they had conveyed her onto this place in the de la Vallière estate. Some of them had died to the traps and others to her hunger, but she had still waited here under the dreadful gaze of her ultimate father-in-darkness.
And now there was some relative of the Duke who was throwing around scary pink fire, so she had deliberately and cautiously withdrawn out of the way of the burning which had already consumed no small number of the other bloodsuckers. Which was a good thing, because clearly she would be a more valued servant when all the other ones were dead. She might even end up a real duchess. And a necessary part of this was keeping out of the way of a fight.
Thus she did not exactly expect a foul-smelling goblinoid armed with a sharpened silver candlestick to drop in from the ceiling and start beating her skull in with the blessed metal.
Maggat cracked his knuckles as the corpse disintegrated into silvery ashes, breathing heavily. "I feel bit less angry," he observed. "But only little bit. Lots more anger left for vampy smashing."
"Told you there'd be tunnels or shafts for lettin' fresh air in," Scyl said, poking his head down from the ceiling. "How else would all the vampies breathe?"
Maxy dropped down too. "That... very good question," he said. "Oh look. I was right, boss vampy is making overlady fight sister in drama-tick fight to death for funnies." He nudged Maggat. "Get it? It joke because 'tick' is blood-sucking para-site. Like vampy. Ow," he added, rubbing his head.
"We burn vampy now?" Igni asked, dropping down and nearly dropping the pistol he was carrying. Silver wire which had once formed an intricate decoration was sticking out of its barrel, and he was just raring to see what would happen.
"Nah," Maggat whispered. "Look. They all watching overlady and vampy sister. Greens, go kill vamps who is not being careful. And do it silent-like. We gots to be ready for when overlady want us, but double-dead vamps is always helping her, yes?"
Unseen, silver-wielding blurs in the air fanned out and started with the bludgeoning.
...
Louise could hear Cattleya's pant as she slowly moved into position, hear the grinding of her teeth. That was reassuring. Her sister was fighting it. Not very reassuring, of course, because she was still hefting that monstrous sword in both hands and Louise had seen too well how fast that thing could be swung around, but it was at least something.
"I am going to kill you!" Louise shrieked at her many-great grandfather. "You... you wicked, wicked swine! Call her off! I am going to make you suffer! For a long, long time!"
"Heard that before," the duke said with a yawn. "Just take the crystal and everything will be fine." He shrugged. "It's not like you can win either way, in case you're planning some stupidly Heroic move where you let her kill you to ensure I stay trapped. Though I very much doubt that kind of idiocy occurred to someone as Evil as you."
Louise had to admit that it hadn't. Mostly because that would involve her dying, not that dog who she would see dead and buried before she even thought of giving up.
"I'm really, really sorry, Louise," Cattleya called out from the darkness. "I do really want to kill you though, but I don't want to want to kill you, so sorry!" Her sister kept on calling out apologies from beyond her vision, and Louise tried to repress a smile. Maybe... maybe Cattleya was fighting it the best she could. This way she could hear her. She began to chant again, following the sound of her sister, and lightning crackled on top of her staff, painfully bright compared to the pink of her flame.
Listening as best she could, Louise aimed, and prayed that it would work like she hoped. A thundercrack sounded in the underground cavern and Cattleya was sent flying back, tumbling over and over, before she flipped to her feet and vanished up into the ceiling with an inhuman leap. However, rather more importantly, the sword went flying, clattering off, and there was a distinctive 'twoing' that suggested it was stuck in a wall somewhere.
"Let go of my sister!" she shouted, the ball of fire in her hand flaring brighter in her rage. "Gnarl! Tell me how to take him down!" Cattleya was scared of the fire, keeping away, so she was safe for the moment.
"You need to weaken him before we can carry out the ritual to bind him," the elderly minion said, yawning. "He'll need to be vulnerable first."
"That's no help at all!" Louise hissed under her breath. "I have a plan, but I need more than that!"
"Shh, Cattleya," Louis commanded. "Stop being such a blabber mouth. Now, Louise, see," the vampire said, flashing a sharp grin, "I do believe I win either way. You see, if she kills you, that'll be the blood of a blood relative split upon unhallowed ground thrice bound and I can break this imprisonment put upon me by your rather annoying father. And he went and made it so the relative had to be alive and untainted by vampirism, too, which was particularly annoying. So much talent, so much potential, such a natural gift for blood magic... and then he just downright refuses to practice it! Honestly! I went to all the trouble of arranging for his parents to meet, and he wastes the effort I put into it!"
"I won't give you that satisfaction!" Louise snapped, holding her burning palms aloft. She knew that Cattleya knew that she had to keep concentrating to keep the magic working. "I am going to gut you and... and tear out those amulets and then cook you over a slow fire!"
There was a wrenching noise in the darkness, the sound of stone crumbling and being torn. Louise cause a glimpse of something white and dodged. She was barely fast enough; Cattleya had thrown a statue at her. It whistled past her ear and broke against the far wall.
"That's the spirit," her ancestor told her. "You're showing precisely what I've been breeding for! A wonderful talent for dark magic! The sadism! The rage! The fact that you're already wearing a demon-forged suit of armour, carrying a gauntlet that even I've only ever seen before in books, and commanding a loyal horde of minions – true, purebred minions – well, granddaughter, Cattleya says you're only sixteen, but I'd say you're a prodigy! I'm even more of a success than I thought I was!
"Your eldest sister was a disappointment, and Cattleya was convenient and slept with her window open. I had thought it would be most amusing to target you, because it would have been hilarious – much as it always is – to force your wretchedly Good parents to deal with a vampiric six year old... vampires that young always end up really, really funny to watch, because they never learn to control their instincts. And there's a fresh taste to the blood of those so young. But I'm glad I didn't, because you're much more fun now! All you need to do is take your crystal from me, and I can guide you so we can take control of the country which should have been mine by right! Tristain for the de la Vallières!"
Panting, straining to keep the fire alight, Louise nevertheless shivered as her blood ran cold. She had lived for so long for praise from her parents, but to get it from this ancestor? When he had been planning to do... what he had done to Cattleya... to her? She... it had so nearly been her. The only reason she was alive right now was that she had taken the chill easily as a child and slept with her windows closed in even the hottest weather.
That was utterly terrifying.
"So that's what you want?" Louise asked, trying to keep him talking. Cattleya didn't attack her when he was talking, so he was probably instructing her to keep back while he monologued. "Controlling the country."
"Naturally," the vampire said casually. "At least as a first step, before we seize back the empire from the various curs who stole it from us! I was my father's oldest son; just because he wasn't married to my mother, he gets to fob me off with a dukedom rather than the crown which should have been mine? Not on my watch! It's what I've been looking for. And right now, the throne is weak and the queen has no undisgraced heir. Grandaughter, there are fewer than ten people between you and the throne! I've spent over a hundred years making sure the family marries people with royal blood, picking the right wives and husbands, marrying extra children into other lines and then marrying them back. Honestly, don't people think about the meanings of words? What is a king, but a lord over lords? And," and the smile grew even wider, "true power rests in the blood."
"You're utterly insane!" Louise snapped.
"No, no, no, no, no!" her ancestor snapped. "That's a Hero thing to say! Bad girl!"
There was a crack of air and something hit her in the breastplate, knocking the air from her lungs. Something went crunch, and Louise had a horrifying suspicion that it was one of her ribs. And now she was flat on her back. The fire was still burning though, and clutching her staff she pulled herself to her feet, sending her sister hissing back. Her free hand went to her chest; there was a fist-sized dimple over her heart where the plate was bent in. The padding had taken what it could of the blow, but... Founder, had she been shot?
No. That had just been a punch from Cattleya.
"Your dreadful parents have been a Good influence on you to say that kind of thing!" he continued. "You should be saying things like 'Why should I share power with you?' and 'You fool! What can you possibly offer me!'. That's a sensible thing to say! It shows proper ambition! And I can explain why!"
"Don't listen to him!" Gnarl snapped. "I'm your advisor, not him! You can't trust a vampire lord like that, my lady! He'll just make you into an enthralled pawn!"
"You fool," Louise said, trying not to sound in pain. She could hear her chest crackle when she breathed. "What can you possibly offer me." She paused and added, trying to keep the wheedling note out of her voice, "After all, you're a vampire. Surely you can't have been smart enough to... to stop all your weaknesses even... um, if you don't catch fire."
She'd just caught, at the edge of her vision, something which looked distinctly like a vampire being mobbed by a group of foul-smelling goblins. Which meant she just had to buy more time. And maybe deal with Cattleya... she bought her staff around in a warding arc of fire and her sister retreated, hissing. Cattleya hadn't said a thing since the Duke had made her be silent. Which made things horribly easier in some ways.
Vampire weaknesses, vampire weaknesses. Which... uh, didn't kill them. And didn't require things like garlic or lemons or witchroot which she didn't have on her. But she needed to think quickly. Because she was getting tired and her will was sapping and if she didn't think of something quickly, she would need to kill or be killed. And she really, really didn't want to do that.
She caught a blur of motion out of the corner of her eye and flinched. It was enough for Cattleya's open-handed slap to hit her arm. The plate rung like a bell, which was hurt a lot when one was wearing it. The pain forced the breath from her lungs and made her scream from the pain in her ribs. Reflexively she swing her flame-tipped staff towards her sister. With a shriek, the vampire retreated, and Louise was left alone again.
It hurt a lot. Really, a lot. Her arm didn't feel broken, but she was going to have the mother of all bruises there tomorrow morning and really, really hopefully she'd live that long. She waggled her fingers. And then waggled them again.
She let the fire go out. "Okay, great-times-something grandfather," she declared. "Let's hear your offer, then. I get to keep Cattleya, right?"
Her sister, eyes glowing dull red, fingers twisted into claws was suddenly in front of her, between her and the Duke. Her coat had been split open by her movement, revealing that Cattleya had only thrown the outer garment over the top of her night dress – which did explain how she had changed so quickly. Streaks of red marked their way down from her sister's eyes; she had been crying blood. The look in her eyes, past the glow was raw pain.
"What are you up to?" the elder vampire asked suspiciously, from behind the protective shield of her sister. "I expected far more banter and demonstrations of my fabulous sense of humour before you started to see the dark." The man pursed his lips, thinking, and then chuckled delightedly. "Aha! You wanted to expose her so you could kill her yourself! Sororicide for preservation and prospects! Why, I killed my half-sister myself, back when I was a mere boy. Feel free! Cattleya is a lot less fun than I thought she would be, honestly. Too much of your blessed parents in her, I'm afraid. It's very disappointing. Your great-great grandmother took to vampirism like a bat to blood, but your sister's just... weak. I'll even tell her to stand still!"
Louise threw her hand out and Cattleya hissed, recoiling already from the fire. What hit her, however, was not burning pink. No, what hit her was gold and silver.
"Why are you throwing coins at me, Louise?" Cattleya asked, from the edge of the light.
In response, Louise scattered another handful. And another. "How many are there, Cattleya?" she shouted back. More and more handfuls got thrown down, some of them behind her. "They're just sitting around the place, looking messy! And you hate messiness, right? How many, Catt?"
Cattleya blinked, eyes suddenly no longer glowing. "I... one, two, three, four..."
Louise scattered a handful right on top of the lot her sister was staring at. "You missed some!"
"That's mean! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven..."
And that was about as far as she got before Louise hit her around the jaw with the unlit end of her staff, as hard as she could. "Sorry!" she apologised as Cattleya doubled up in pain, bringing her armoured knee into contact with her sister's face. "Don't take it personally!"
"'At's o-ay," Cattleya managed, dribbling blood. No one who just got kneed in the face should look that grateful. "I 'an regro' 'eeth. On', 'oo, 'ee,'or... ah. Ah. Ah."
Louise hit her again in the face with her staff with all her strength despite the pain, and bone cracked. "Tell me if you don't think you can heal it!" she yelled as she stomped on one of her sister's clawed hands. "Just keep on counting! It's not your fault that you're having to count all these things; that's just a vampire thing, right?" She drove her staff into her sister's midsection. "Keep that in mind! You're just being a vampire, you're not fighting his control at all! He made you one so that's what he wants..." she grunted as she kicked her, "... you to do!"
"'At's 'igh'," Cattleya managed, not even moving to defend herself. "I'n 'ryin' 'o 'ill 'er, 'ran'ather, but 'ampire stu'..." Another staff blow to her already-battered face knocked out one of her elongated canines. "On', 'oo, 'ee..."
Trying to resist the guilt of her battered sister, Louise straightened out and poured out more and money on top of her, drawing it from her treasury through the Gauntlet until Cattleya was almost buried under coins. That should keep her busy, even if her sister managed to heal. She turned around, and let out a pained exhalation, her dented armour protesting. Despite all that, despite how hard that had been, she still... wanted to smirk. Just a little bit. For managing to find a way to incapacitate her sister without vio... without anyone dying.
Her sister was out of the way. Her vampiric ancestor was there, face twisted in a pout, lit from below by the blue glow of the tower heart. Soon, she promised herself. Very soon.
"Your move, grandfather," she said, sweetly, igniting the fire again. "And minions, I do believe I'm having all the burny fun. You like jokes, grandfather? Reds! Open fire!"
...
