Chapter 11

“Very well Wizard, I accept your offer. We will hunt together to find and punish the responsible for my daughters death. We shall not stop until our prey is caught. Thrice said and done Artharian Dagworth, Knight of Winter.”

As I turn from the detective to him I feel the fae magic binding me to the promise. Bastard got me with my pants down, I’ve been avoiding the courts for so long that I’m getting slow on the games the Sidhe plays. Tricked by the human emotions the Lord of Tylwyth Teg has shown me I forgot he is not human.

Gwyn ap Nudd, don’t want to unleash a full hunt, it would get him in too much trouble with the other wyld fae powers and the courts, he would have to call favors or enter new debts to to avoid reprimands by the other Sidhe and the city council. But he does need to punish the responsible for the death of his daughter. So he just played me to agree to work for him.

Now, this is not the end of the world, after all we did come here to get his cooperation, and I think he always intended to do so. But by presenting myself as acting part of the guard on this case I made it my responsibility to solve it. And if I fail to do so would look bad on my patron, Mab, and she would act to avoid being shamed by her underling failure. So Gwyn basically guaranteed that the criminal will be caught, either if I succeed or not. The only person screwed up on this was me, because if I did fail and Mab got involved, she wouldn’t be happy with me. Son of a bitch.

True is, she doesn't need to get involved, but appearances matter to the sidhe. If I fail my vow to Gwyn, she either keeps me as knight anyways, and have all her enemies point that winter has a failure as one of it’s knights, she cut ties to me and discard me (I don’t think I’d survive that), or she fix the situation. I know, this whole debt and obligation on vassals and suseran is very confusing for me as well. But I wanted to make clear that it’s not really a suseran obligation to fix all the vassal mistakes, I don’t want anyone pleading to the sidhe thinking they are obliged to fix their problems..

“My lord is cunning and wise” I tell Gwyn through my teeth as I bow to him to concede a point. “Now tell us what do you know of our prey”.

“Not so fast knight of winter, with business out of the way you all are my guests now, I won’t have people say bad things about the Tylwyth Teg hospitality. Come have a meal with me, food and drinks given freely and willing.”

Now that you got what you want, you play nice, asshole. Yeah, I’m feeling a little bitter here, isn’t like he screwed me sideways, but I really hate being tricked by the sidhe. And yes, I’m aware I’m a sore loser.

“Thank you my lord, but considering that the criminal is still at large, shouldn’t we focus on catching him before he strikes again?” I try to wiggle out of spending more time here then necessary.

“No sense Wizard, they will not act until darkness fall. Now let's eat and then talk” He says as he gets up from his throne, hands his longsword to his wife and motion for us to follow him inside.

As we follow the sidhe lord inside his hall I’m starting to have a bad feeling about this. What does he means they won’t act until darkness fall?

We are led in to a great hall with tables set and enough food and drinks of all kinds and taste for a battalion. “You can eat without fear, but don’t accept or give any gift to the sidhe and be polite”. I tell the detectives, they probably already know it, but better safe than sorry.

At least the food is damn good. And the music and entertainment as well. The sidhe do know how to live the life. After we are well fed and rejected some offers of fun by a number of sidhe ladies and boys, we are taken to a back room where the lord and lady are waiting for us.

“Your hospitality is as incredible as the stories tell my lord.” I tell Gwyn once we are all seated. “But my mind is weighted with the case and I ask you again to tell us everything you know about our prey.”

“Very well Wizard, but first, I wonder if your companions have anything against me, they haven’t spoken once unless to answer questions.” He tell us, while looking to the detectives and Pyralis.

“I’m here to help guard the wizard on his mission, my lord, anything that doesn't threaten him is not my concern at the moment.” Lis answer managing to make even her melodical voice sounds bored. Thanks, Lis, good to know you care..

“Very well.” He answers and turns to the detectives.

“My lord” Hendrickson answers “Wizard Dagworth is our expert on this case, we didn’t want to talk out of turn and intrude on his job.” Good, be neutral and put all the pressure on me. Thanks detective. Good to know you also care. But seriously, I did demand that they led me deal with Gwyn entirely before we even left the precinct.

“Wise”. Gwyn answer him.

“So, let's talk about our prey.” He states.

So, here is what we learned from Gwyn ap Nudd in three short words. We are screwed. Well mostly me, but I’m being dramatic. And yes, I’m also aware I’m have a touch for it.

First Gwyn explained to me his remark about darkness, all abductions happened during the night. One thing the detectives either didn’t know, or forgot to share with me. And the moment I learned this I started doing some math.

The second thing we learned were the exact number of victims and the exact dates. I quickly added it into the math I was doing in my head.

The third thing we learned helped us confirm that whoever is doing it, is coming outside the city walls. As Gwyn had managed to confirm that the two cases that happened further from the wall were copycats trying to blame their crimes on the wave of missing people.

That’s when I finished my calculations and realized what we were dealing with. Somehow a junkie had gotten through the outer walls and shields, and now we are dealing with an infestation.

Not only I have to deal with them when on missions, but now we also have vampires inside the enclave. I was sure of it. The events happening during night time only was one give away, but the timing from when the abductions went from single abductions to multiple matches the time it took for the first victim to turn, and then it kept escalating as more victims turned. If nothing was done, the number of attacks will keep increasing.

Ok time for vampire lore 101.

Vampires are mortals possessed by a spirit. I have no idea what is their origin and how the first possession came to be.The possessing spirit is like a parasite and a symbiotic at the same time. It gives increased physical abilities to the mortal, like extra strength, speed and reflexes. Also great regeneration powers that in tandem with allowing the vampire to recover from almost any wound it gives them their immortality, as their cells regenerate perfectly, no longer aging. But the spirit eats the life force of the host. The more the host uses the power of the spirit the more life force it consumes. For that reason vampires feed of other creatures. The blood drinking is not really necessary, just that it’s the most effective way for the vampire to create a link to it’s victim and drain their life force.

If a vampire goes without drinking life force for too long, the spirit consumes all the host life force and the body dies. When that happens only the hunger of the spirit is left and the vampire will search and attack the closest source of life energy. Once it’s fed and the life force returns the host wakes up from their death and their body is fully working again. This process makes the vampires creatures that can be both undead or alive. While alive a vampire can do everything a regular person can, including eating, it actually helps them maintain their life force, reducing the need to feed on others.

Also, a vampire can during the act of feeding, infect a victim with it’s curse, and in time the infection will grow and the victim will turn into a vampire as well.

Now before the end vampirism wasn’t a big problem, outside of the sun, that for some reason unknown to me, burns them in to ashes, it was pretty easy to live as vampire. The amount of life force they needed to drink wasn’t that big, and all that ecstasy during feeding is just teenage romance bullshit. So they could easily feed from a person without harming them, and their magical affinity due to the spirit possession allowed them the abilities to do it without even the victim being aware. Sure, some crazy people who became a vampire would go in a power trip, but there was enough checks on the magical community to avoid it becoming a big problem.

Now, want to hear one more cool story of how the world ended? No? Too bad.

When everything was going down, before magic went completely haywire, in a lot of places the highest danger were the zombies hordes. And many people managed to create relatives seas of safety with high walls and other physical obstruction that your regular undead couldn’t cross.

But then came the vampires. By the end of the world, there was a big community of vampires around the world, but with the exploding population of humanity, there was never a lack of food for them. That until the zombies. No regular zombies (and they were basically the only kind before magic went to hell) could ever hope of killing a vampire, no horde could pin one down. So while regular people died left and right to them, the vampires survived. That at least until they run out life force. Then they went crazy and somewhere along the road they started to prey on the dead.

Now, the undead virus and the spirit didn’t match very well. All vampires who fed on the zombies went crazy. Whatever they get from the dead can maintain them on their undead stage, but doesn't seem to satiate their hunger. And the virus kills the host, once and for all, so even if an infected vampire were to feed on regular life energy, it would not return to life, continuing its existence as undead creature who only wants to feed. They no longer have the control of not killing their victims and always infect them, as if the spirit possessing them is trying to escape it’s new wretched existence.

This new kind of vampire, we call junkies, because once they try undead blood, they are nothing more then junkies. And there were no walls that can stop a junkie, and so almost if not all the surviving compounds fell to them. With their numbers doubling or more every 3 days or so, any compound that didn’t have a mage to identify what was happening early on, or a magical patron like the Sidhe fell to the junkies and increased their numbers.

They grew to such numbers that they became a danger even for magically warded places. Most of them were wiped when the realms started crashing into ours, or fell victims to the battle of the big powers, but there are still many out there surviving from drinking the blood of the undead. And now it seems one of them found its way inside the the enclave.

Time to find their nest and sharp our wooden stakes.