++No matter how charming or human the vampire seems, make no mistake about its nature. It is different than you. Lesser. Do not treat it as one of your own kind. Do not put it on a level with your fellow man.++

  Chapter 31

  Bullets, such simple things. A little chunk of lead. Round, cast. Easy. Basic. The most primitive structure a human might make, surely. Maybe a wooden stick was more so, but that was all that came to mind. So simple.

  Simplicity hadn’t stopped this one from changing things, though. Reggie had just been simpled to death.

  The wound wasn’t a bad one, but it’d come at a bad time and was slowing him just enough that his enemy had already retaken the advantage Reggie had fought so hard to claim for himself. The knife flicked around and sheared a corner from his shoulder, nice and neat.

  Reggie screamed, slashed for the elf’s face, then screamed again, this time in fury rather than pain, as his enemy ducked back from the blow. Now Eryqai was growing confident and sure, his footing cohered into something more practiced than panicked.

  Now Reggie was growing unsteady and doubtful, his guard crumbling into something more feral than smart.

  He stumbled away as the flashing blade chased him and more gunshots rang out, most hitting the ground around them.

  “Halt!” the elf snarled, risking one glance back at the townsfolk, “you’ll hit me you fucking imbeciles!” Reggie took the chance, lashed a clawed hand out for his neck and then froze as the knife materialised right into his chest.

  The elf sneered at him. “Your kind are all the same, living or dead. Just grunting apes. Dogs. Pets, or cattle, but not warriors.” He twisted the knife, drove it deeper. Reggie felt one of his lungs sliced neatly in half as its enchanted edge cut a path right through his innards.

  Strength was leaving him fast. His body didn’t bleed like a human’s did, but the blood still had weight inside it. Gravity would leave it to slowly slide from an opened vessel as any stagnant liquid would. How long did he have? Regenerating at top speed, transformed all the way, Reggie had been burning through his ichor fast. It was maybe two-thirds gone now, and going faster still.

  Enough, he decided. Reggie had enough. He reached out and grabbed the elf’s face with both hands, sent the talons scraping along it. He screamed, twisted and spasmed in an instinctive flight from the pain while Reggie lunged forwards and bit down hard.

  Right on his neck.

  A vampire’s fangs were its deadliest weapons, deadliest by far. They were sharper than the talons, magic-sharp, and Reggie felt his cut right through the skin and muscle, digging in to open up the big veins beneath. Reggie’s mouth was full of salty blood in an instant, then he emptied it all down his throat and felt it replaced by a single new arterial pulse.

  The elf was screaming, thrashing, stabbing at Reggie in dirty, hastened jabs that saw the knife driven deep all over him. Reggie ignored the thrusts. He was healing fast, Regeneration pushed to full blast and blood reserves replenished almost as fast as they were being depleted. Gunfire started hitting him, hailstones of lead, an endless volley of pin-pricks. He ignored those too.

  All that mattered was killing the Circumscriber. That was step three. Afterwards Reggie could turn to focus on the rest of the people, fight as he needed to. Just drink. He was tasting the life of his enemy, all he had to do was—

  Something smashed him hard and sent Reggie rolling off the elf, coming to a clumsy stop. He looked up and saw Barry stumbling to his knees following the kick, his chest a mess of torn chain links and gore. Still rising and falling, though. Still breathing.

  Eryqai was moving as well, his body still mobile and life still occupying it despite the exsanguinating grapple. That left him worse off than Reggie, just about.

  Everything hurt. Most of it was sharp pain, the lively sort that only magical steel had yet made Reggie feel. He groaned, rolled over onto his knees and started getting up. More bullets hit him, fat and heavy lead balls smashing hard against Reggie’s back, his head, his arms and legs. Pinpricks. More pinpricks, a dozen, a score. They added up, robbing his strength from him.

  Idiots. I’m trying to help you. Reggie finally got up just as Barry reached him and levelled his loaded nock gun, then fired. Reggie stepped aside and heard the screams as seven pistol balls ripped clean into the gathered crowd, spitting blood high and making the air reek of opened veins. He punched the Witchfinder as hard as he could, watched his head jerk back like it was being yanked by a rope then kicked the legs out from under him. Reggie went down atop Barry and bit him, started drinking. He was flooded with ichor, with strength, healing and growing. It took all his willpower to stop short of killing the man.

  Reggie wasn’t going to drink a human to death. Not a damned human, not him. Not even a human made of calcified scum.

  He looked up just as the elf did, got up just as the elf did, lurched forwards just as the elf turned and lurched away.

  “No!” Eryqai cried out, bawling like a child who’d suddenly started losing what he thought was his game, “stop! Leave me alone!”

  Reggie didn’t leave him alone. He turned his stumble into the closest proximity to a run he could manage, smashed into the elf and knocked him down. The knife flashed up, sank through Reggie’s palm and burst out through the back of the hand. He snarled, closed fingers tight around its handle and twisted. Twisted until it felt like he was wrenching the nerves out of his arm, but he got the knife out of Eryqai’s grip and yanked it into his other hand. The elf was panicking now, thrashing around beneath him, kicking, crying.

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  Reggie waited to feel sorry for him.

  [Kill him.]

  I can’t.

  [Do it.]

  I shouldn’t.

  [Stab down.]

  I won’t.

  But there wasn’t any sickness in his gut or wrongness in his mind or reluctance in his heart, there was nothing at all but the sound of a frantic heart beating beneath him and hot blood sloshing in half-emptied veins. Was this the feeling of vampirism? Was this what it meant to be a predator?

  Better predator than prey. Reggie stabbed the knife down.

  Angelblade, tier 2. Journeyman.

  Modifiers; Strength +30, Speed +10

  The metal tip went through mana-tough bone like it was dirt, went through the brain meat even easier. Reggie felt a slight tug and heard a weird sucking, then the hilt hit forehead and everything stopped with a queasy crunch.

  Not much blood, that surprised him. Not much blood at all considering how important a bodypart was now riddled with steel. What was more surprising was Eryqai somehow still living, gurgling and twitching. Reggie couldn’t help himself at that, he bit down and started drinking. Blood Magic forced the stilling blood into his mouth and he drained it all fast.

  +1 Charisma

  Progress to next Tier, 42/50

  Name: Reginald Smith

  Age: 21

  Race: Blood Courtier [Inheritor Race, Tier 2]

  Class: None

  Attributes:

  (S)Strength 35(+12)

  (P)Speed 34(+12)

  (P)Celerity 34(+12)

  (S)Toughness 35(+12)

  (P)Charisma 11(-12)

  Abilities:

  Blood Magic I

  Form of the Beast II

  Royal Presence I

  Traits:

  Enhanced Senses I

  Regeneration I

  Addictive Ichor

  Reggie rolled off the elf, lay in a heap groaning and twitching. Funny how a bit of magic in his wounds made long-dead nerves think they were still alive and start tugging on muscle. He spent a half-minute like that before his Regeneration had squeezed enough of the meat back together that things stopped hurting quite as much.

  By the time he sat back up, he was surrounded by townsfolk.

  His first instinct was to bolt, but Reggie realised they weren’t closing in on him. Of course they weren’t. All of them were scared. All of them were, as far as they were concerned, staring down a monster able to tear apart an elf. How would he feel looking at a wolf spider after it mauled someone?

  Reggie ignored every instinct he had as they all screamed at him in unison, and started transforming back. He felt the painful pop of bones realigning, his breathing growing heavy.. That poor, tortured body of his was already working so hard to patch everything up that the added pain almost killed him. Reggie wondered if he’d delayed his healing by changing back.

  That was a problem for later though. By the time Reggie had finished his return transformation to human, he was already seeing recognition on a few of the older faces around him. That much was no surprise. He’d healed his disfigurement, and the memory of the devil-boy probably stuck with people well enough that his face accompanied it.

  Reggie decided he’d better talk fast. If he waited, someone else would work up the nerve to speak. He’d be fucked if these people got the chance to start throwing their voices everywhere, he already knew perfectly well what those voices wanted done with him.

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you,” Reggie began, “I’m just here because you were going to kill Ludvich. I wanted to save him. Now I have. I’m going to leave, I’ll take Ludvich with me, and none of you have to ever see me again.” It was a fair offer, he thought. Fairer than a lot of people would make when their only friend came five minutes away from turning into charcoal.

  But Reggie hadn’t calculated the situation properly.

  “How about we tie you both to the same pyre and avenge the people you killed,” someone spat.

  “How about we purge your filth from this town and go about our lives in peace?” another added.

  One voice cut out from the rest and marked itself as different. Anne, Reggie recognised.

  “Just let him go,” she urged everyone, “we don’t need this fight.” Was that a shade of pity he saw in her eyes? Reggie thought so.

  Then the snarls and cries were all coming too fast to pick out, blending into one another in one great mess. Reggie tried to back away, but remembered he was surrounded, and now the ring of people was closing in.

  He realised what had happened, of course. Seeing him transform back, the people of Norvhan now thought he was at the end of his strength. Fear had been the only thing keeping them from killing him, and now they were working themselves up to do it in what they thought was a position of power.

  Shit, maybe it was. Reggie felt his body as a leaden weight, maybe three quarters of his ichor reserves still left inside it and dropping fast as he burned more on Regeneration. Apparently the more injuries he had, the more his body fixed all at once, the faster he drained himself. The wounds were healing quickly, though, and he had another transformation in him.

  Reggie held off on it for the time being. He didn’t want this to escalate, he could still reason with the people here. He knew he could.

  “I haven’t killed anyone I wasn’t forced to,” he snapped, “just let me go and you won’t have any more trouble.” This time he didn’t even get an answer, at least not a human one. Just incoherent animal noises as hatred and fear distilled themselves enough to crush speech entirely. The crowd started for him, and Reggie finally gave up.

  His transformation took about a second, long enough that torches and muskets found his skin while he awaited it.

  Soft skin, prior to the transformation. Reggie had made himself vulnerable and unthreatening in the hopes of winning the people over. He hadn’t. Just made himself vulnerable and unthreatening, and he was feeling that vulnerability sharply now as a half-dozen wounds weeped with foaming blood and exposed, shredded tissues. By the time he finally finished his transformation it felt like most of his strength was gone already.

  Reggie panicked, slashed out with his new claws and cut a man completely in half with just one stroke. Blood hit the air, extending through it in long fingers as people screamed and recoiled.

  Not vulnerable anymore, eh? Yeah. Back off.

  But it wasn’t everyone falling away, some of the townsfolk redoubled their efforts and brought hammers, lumber axes and any number of other makeshift weapons down on Reggie with the sort of Strength he’d dreamed of as a human. He felt little nicks and creases open in his skin, looked around to try and find a path through the bodies.

  Then he saw Anne. She was screaming, still, but her eyes were full of hate now. Grief too. Had she known one of the people he’d just taken apart?

  “Kill it!” she roared, glaring right at him, “put it down!”

  Reggie didn’t know why that hurt so much. He didn’t know why it’d been so comforting for her voice, even on its own, to be calling the killers off. Now that it was over he felt like a weight had been stripped from him. Reggie moved.