The mansion groaned.
Paint and plaster on wall and ceiling cracked and creased. Candlesticks shook. Faint flames flickered. Rita's call – the predator's call - awakened something in the otherwise unreachable humans. An ancient instinct within all living beings that bade them fight or flee.
"Hunt!"
One man's proclamation rang clear, repeating the call.
"Hunt!"
His cry was echoed by bloodthirsty howls that rattled lights, glasses, and the air itself. In the vampires, too, awoke primal instincts.
"Hunt!"
The vibration had Noel nervously backing away from the door. "Go," she hissed at the men and women gathered around the door, who were just now beginning to realize she was a stranger. "Now. In this state, they won't-."
"Feast!"
They scattered. As the walls thrummed, the remaining humans in the chateau fled in any direction they could. Their atrophied minds no longer considered subservience, just survival.
"Feast!"
All pretense of decorum was gone. The only voice missing from the chorus now was Rita's. Noel took Louise's hand and pulled the maid from her trance. "Come on." She ran. Louise followed, nearly tripping over her apron.
"Feast!"
The cry that more and more resembled a countdown to a twisted game of tag only grew in volume as they distanced themselves from the dining hall. "Damnit, damnit, damnit!" Noel swore under her breath. "They like to play with their food," she hissed. "No human's safe!"
"Blood!"
Noel rounded one corner and made for the next. Louise panted and wheezed behind her, barely able to keep up with the speed of a regular human's run. "Ugh, just hold still!" With only that warning she scooped up the smaller woman and threw her over her shoulder, dashing forward while Louise squeaked and protested.
"Blood!"
The servant's quarters were nearby. The chanting accompanied Noel through the halls as she rounded corner after corner and seconds later came face to face with the door. She set down Louise and spun her around, gripping the girl's shoulders tightly. "Hide in one of the closets," Noel said. "The old scents will mask your presence. It's your best shot."
"Blood!"
"What about you?" Louise breathed. "I won't-."
"Récolte!"
A great heaving assaulted their ears. Doors slammed open. Feet rumbled against the floor. The wooden supports holding up the roof splintered, sprouting sharp growths. The countdown had ended. The hunt had begun.
"I lied," said Noel, her breaths coming in short and shallow. "Earlier, I lied twice. I do know what it's like. I've been where you stand. Don't worry about me. Worry about yourself." Louise felt the woman's grip waver. "There's still hope for you, I promise. Just hang on."
"A-and the second lie?"
The Executor chuckled. She seemed in that moment to be less of a sardonic Sister, and more a tired woman whose youth and best years had been taken from her too soon. Weary creases formed in the corners of her eyes as she smiled mischievously.
"The truth is," Noel said with a wink. "I am an action hero."
With one push, Louise was sent tumbling back. The last thing she glimpsed before the door slammed shut was a triumphant warrior, holding aloft a weapon that shined in the darkness. The last thing she heard was the beginnings of a prayer: "Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio…"
The last thing she felt was hope, stabbing into her heart like a molten dagger.
Panic stampeded through the halls. Half the servants had split off on their own. The other half had been guided in the same direction by instinct: towards the front doors and the promise of escape. They had neither breath nor thought for words. Each poured their all into a mad dash from death.
Left, right, left, left, right. There it was. A pair of thick double doors, upon which was emblazoned a many-petaled flower caught between bloom and wilt. Living hands had never breached that portal from the inside.
The herd threw themselves at the doors in one great wave. A mighty crash followed, and then cries of pain as the human battering ram buckled and broke, leaving those at the forefront pockmarked red. The patterns upon the doors writhed. Crimson-stained thorns extruded from the wood.
The mass reformed. Fear took the reins, droving another desperate charge. Once more the bulkiest among them squared their shoulders and drove forward. Once more they were painfully rebuffed.
"Footsteps!" cried out one woman as the sobs started. Blood would draw monsters. It could only be death, come to hunt them to extinction. If they fought, then perhaps-.
"Youuuuuu're iiiiiin theeeeee waaaaaay!"
A slim shape barreled down the hall, tensed her legs, and sailed over the group. She fell upon the doors like a silver bullet, bringing to bear the length of steel in her hands.
The doors exploded outwards in a shower of splinters. In flowed a fresh breeze. Standing in the resulting beam of moonlight was a maid clutching a polearm longer than she was tall. The nonsensical sight was enough to steal away one's breath.
She offered the assembled humans a cheery wave.
"Right this way, right this way!" she chirped. "No crowding, now. Please exit the manor in an orderly fashion. Failure to follow instructions will get you devoured."
The mass hesitated. Was she inhuman as well?
Noel tilted her head quizzically as she pulled her hair loose from its uncomfortable bun and affixed a pair of pink ties to hold it to the side. "Oh? Do you want to stay in this hellhole? If so, the Lord and I can just go…"
An elderly lady rushed past her that instant. A young man followed. The whole group surged through the exit while throwing words of gratitude into the air.
"Well, now," she smirked. "Don't thank me just yet. That was the easy part. Watch your step!"
A shriek followed. As the first to run stepped onto the massive lawn, fingers sprang from the dirt and grasped at her ankle. Wrist, elbow, and shoulders followed, and then a desiccated, hairless, eyeless head filled with gnashing teeth. Its skin was distended and torn in multiple places as pitch-black thorns sprouted from its flesh.
The escapees found themselves facing yet another obstacle: the hundreds of meters of castle grounds between them and the gate, and the sea of corpses pulling themselves from it.
"Who said you could stop!?" Noel's boot slammed into the Ghoul's face, dissolving it into blessed ash. Using the fading Dead as a stepping-stone she bounded upwards, a lacy, frilly blur, and slammed a black stake into the side of the chateau, hanging halfway up its imposing height. "Gimme some room here!" she called down to the retreating refugees, even as more Dead rose from flowerbeds.
Moments later she was atop the roof again. The same edge from which she had considered throwing herself hours earlier.
Noel could have cursed her past stupidity. Instead, she planted her halberd into the roof, gathered six stakes in her hands, and uttered a prayer. One line. Two. She stopped when her body shook and the weapons in her hands glowed with magical energy.
She had spent all night running. No, all year. No, the better part of the last decade. It had taken her this long to realize she was sick of it.
Noel poured prayer into her left hand and hurled the first Black Key straight below, plating it with several throws' worth of force. It tore through an advancing Ghoul, sinking into the loam below. The second was aimed further away, the third even farther, almost to the iron gates. She reared back her right and repeated the maneuver, throwing the keys so they landed in a parallel line.
Noel took a deep breath. In that moment, she found the peace she'd sought for months. For she knew, here and now, that she was the tyrant, and they were the weak.
"Oh temple!" she called out. "Appareo!"
Pure light erupted from earth, banishing the night.
The prayers of those who'd bled and died in a vampire's garden were answered at last, as the walls of God's temple parted the Dead sea.
The stink of sizzling, rancid flesh filled the air. In the blink of an eye, the graveyard had become a crematorium.
"Well, would you look at that?" Noel admired the sight. "Rotten fish in a barrel."
The disoriented Dead who'd survived the sacrament's light might have still overrun the surviving humans. She crushed that possibility next.
As she hurled fistfuls of sacramental steel from her vantage point, each reducing a walking corpse to ash, the Executor laughed. "Come on, come on, at least try to dodge! Surely at least one of you has enough brain bits left to find a morsel of survival instinct!"
They did not. All in the corridor fell, one by one, while those trapped outside collapsed against the light. In their last moments, the mindless undead reached not for the humans below, but for the woman standing on the edge of the roof, silhouetted against the half-moon.
All that remained was an ashen path studded with red-hilted stakes, leading right to the gates.
"And right this way, everyone!" she proclaimed, with a showy bow. "Thank you for your patience while we cleaned up the path. We hope you enjoyed the show! Please go right on ahead. The exit is-."
"Closed. For renovations."
"…ah. Took your time, did you?" Noel turned back, her elation dissolving. The easy part was over. The vampire who'd mouthed off to Rita earlier leaned against the side of a familiar tower, a nearly spent cigarette between his lips. "What, no surprise attack?"
"Oh, the others feast elsewhere already," he said, showing gleaming teeth. "But I'm not so plebeian as to interrupt a lady when she's putting on a show." The vampire flicked the cigarette away and crushed it beneath leather shoes. "You wore that apron well, little mouse. Consider me enraptured. Perhaps you'd let me get under your skin?"
"My, my," Noel smiled, even as a bead of sweat made its way down her neck. "Playing with your food wasn't enough; you had to flirt with it as well? Too bad, Paulo; I prefer my men with a heartbeat and my meals without one."
"And Bruno prefers his women before their best-by date." The man took another cigarette from within his suit jacket. His eyes flashed green, and its tip was set aflame. "But we must sometimes settle, no?"
A black stake flew past his head, reducing the cigarette to scraps and sending long cracks through one of the tower stones. Bruno blinked.
"Turns out," Noel tightened her grip on her polearm, twisting it so the heavy head settled against the roof. "I'm not in a settling mood. And you're too old anyway!"
The halberd ripped upwards, filling the vampire's vision with clay tiles. With the blink of an eye they burst into flames, crumbling by the time they reached him. Behind them was an empty roof. "Not slow in the head, at least." Bruno muttered to himself as he brushed soot from his shoulder.
The roof erupted beneath him. Amid the scraps of wood and clay was a slab of steel that ripped through Bruno's suit and dove deep beneath his rib cage.
He grasped at the halberd's haft. The world inverted. Beneath him was the sky, and above was-.
"Screw you!" Noel slammed the vampire face-first into fired clay. She shifted her grip and swept Bruno across the roof like the end of a mop, sending tiles and teeth flying through the air. "I'm only-!" She stomped on the man's head once, twice, three times, as his body twitched. "-twenty-eight!" Finally she hefted her halberd, sending the vampire flying into the tower in a mighty crash, crumpling the wall in on itself.
A moment later, the tower burst into flames. The ensuing blast of hot air would've blown Noel right off the roof and into the mass of Dead below, had she not dug her weapon into the wood and tile and held on as she was battered and buffeted. Then the heat and pressure died down, revealing a burnt hole where the tower had stood. At hole's edge stood a man, unperturbed by the sorry state of his face. Teeth regrew. Split skin rejoined. The clock turned backwards until Noel was staring into an unblemished face. Even the bloody hole in his shirt was gone.
She groaned. "I'm not paid enough for this…"
"Little mouse," Bruno asked, all hints of playfulness gone. "Are you, perhaps, rather weak?"
Dread coursed through Noel's veins. Her prior confidence was nowhere to be found. Her grip on the halberd slackened as disbelief danced across her eyes.
"Enrico and Richaud were nobodies." Bruno mused. "It checks out. That armament couldn't kill a proper Dead Apostle." He looked past Noel, to the writhing lattice of insubstantial vines in the night sky. "To think the partner of the Burial Agency's Bow would be an ordinary soldier… no wonder Margie didn't bother. Puts a damper on the fun, wouldn't you say?"
Cold dread, which had gripped tight the Executor's heart, met burning anger. A familiar anger. An impotent rage that kept her spirit burning when all else failed. To be outmatched was one thing; she knew her own mediocrity better than anyone else. But to be overlooked this much…
It brought to mind something a boy had told her.
"I like you, woman," Bruno decided. "You've got spirit and servility. And intel, perhaps. Become my Nightkin. We treat our spawn well." He lit another cigarette. "You should know, all the true sons and daughters of the Rozay-en are Lords at least. Anyone who matters is beyond your blade—"
A trio of stakes flew at the vampire, aimed at the heart, brain, and mouth. Bruno didn't move a muscle. The metal melted and bubbled and boiled away into droplets before ever reaching him.
"Nice eyes!"
Behind the stakes was a black and white blur, spinning towards his neck.
The vampire raised the index finger of his right hand.
Steel met flesh and this time it was metal that warped and bent. The shock of having her swing halted sent the halberd flying from Noel's hands, and her tumbling across the roof.
"Why, thank you." Bruno smiled. "Neat parlor trick, no? Ignition is a cut above Flame. The target burns until no more remains. Great for taking out the trash. Rita truly gives the best presents. Now as I said," he shook his hand, the tiny cut on his finger already healing, "it's pointless – oh? You did something." He furrowed his brows, focusing on the strange sensation.
"Ha… haha…" Noel pushed off the ground, her fingers numb. "Nothing much… just a sacrament that lets you feel pain."
"So the maid fancies herself a domina?" The honeyed poison dripping from every word marked him as truly one of Rozay-en's kin. "Doubtful. I see fear fill your eyes."
"Then look again!"
It was a pointless attack. Both knew it. As Noel charged towards the vampire she raised her hands to shield her head, clutching in each a blade that, in her hands, would inflict little more than scratches. Where had she found the courage to calm her quaking heart? A single memory that resonated over and over again in her mind:
"Look those rotten bastards in the eye, Executor. Your hatred's stronger than their hunger."
She burst into flames. An invisible wave of magical energy washed over Noel, igniting everything it touched. Irons pressed against every inch of skin, searing her senses. A dull roar gave way to crackling and snapping. Angry light invaded all. She could neither hide nor run. Only scream.
Bruno watched the fiery form stumble towards him. He sucked in a smoky breath. Not long now. He wouldn't have to lift another finger.
The flames whirled, spinning into a spiral. Then they rocketed towards him. Bruno focused his gaze, pumping more magical energy into his eyes. The closer one was, the stronger the effect. Once more, the curtain of fire crumbled into dust before him.
Behind that curtain were a pair of eyes that promised death.
Green and red stared at one other. Something foreign stood before him. Something he could neither sense nor comprehend. Bruno acted on reflex. Red flashed emerald green. The next target of his Mystic Eyes was Noel herself.
Fire filled his field of view once more. Yet it was not she who burned.
"Wha – what have you done!?"
They were the last comprehensible words he spoke. A moment later the flames that covered his face traveled down his neck and across his body. Eyes boiled in their sockets. Lungs crumpled from the pressure. He grasped at his neck, spasming, feeling every reactivated neuron in his undead shell crying out in pain all at once.
The Curse of Restoration took effect. Burnt flesh reconstituted itself. Time turned back on charred organs. Yet no matter how far he turned the clock, it didn't matter; the clock itself was alight, and it faithfully felt every relived moment.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Before Noel stood an ouroboros of flame. It would not go out any time soon.
She rubbed at her eyes and winced at the irritation. "God, these suck…"
Her whole body ached, not just her eyes. Only the combat suit beneath her disguise had protected her from the worst of the burns. She collected her halberd. One edge was ruined. The other would serve.
What next?
She looked down. The corridor of light still stood. A dozen people hammered away at the gates on the far side of the lawn. That last barrier, they would have to open themselves. She could not help them; there was a fool in the garden who still needed saving.
Pushing past the pyre in the shape of a man, Noel retraced her steps to the garden.