++It is vital to know the vampire you hunt, assuming you do not have the uncommon luxury of a Circumscriber squad to aid you. Without knowing the vampire, its Lineage and age, you know not what weaknesses plague it. That will make your fight fair, and no Witchfinder can long survive fighting monsters fair.++

  Epilogue

  Norvhan’s grimwoods had been different since the vampire’s massacre. Geoff had heard everyone say as much, but then he’d heard a great many townspeople say a great many things that turned out to be bullshit. Fact was that if ordinary people were good at picking up on supernatural occurrences, Witchfinders like him wouldn’t need half as much training.

  This time, though, he reckoned they were onto something. A prick of instinct in his gut that left every noise around him sharper and closer. Paranoia, some called it. Idiots. No such thing as paranoia in his line of work. There were only the deeply suspicious and the deeply dead.

  For now, Geoff was still suspicious.

  Suspicion was not a curable disease, but a heavy musket held in tight hands did wonders to alleviate its symptoms.

  The quartet of peers shuffling along beside him did better still.

  Five Witchfinders, not an easy number to muster. Almost unheard of for a town like this.

  But then the massacre was unheard of for a town like this, too. The dead Circumscriber. Fear touched Geoff at that. Whoever this Reginald Smith was, he was something to fear.

  The fear didn’t diminish. As they went deeper, he found…nothing. Or less than he ought to have, rather. There were woodlice in this grimwood, and he should’ve encountered at least one or two by now. He encountered none.

  “It’s feeding,” one of his fellow Witchfinders murmured, “been feeding a lot.”

  A rumble went through them all. Geoff didn’t know these men, they’d all arrived from different cities and had deliberately avoided learning one another’s names. Easier to stay detached without names. Witchfinder Number Three was the next to speak.

  “We knew that already. Woods have been quiet, though. Quiet two weeks now.”

  “Went quiet around the time that trouble in Lorwick started,” another one added.

  That had them all thinking. Word from Lorwick was inconsistent, save for its endlessly reliable element of dread. The thought that they might be hunting whatever was responsible for that…

  Geoff paused, then stopped walking outright.

  “We go back,” he hastily said, “we’re not sure what we’re hunting now. We set out for one vampire, less than a match for a healthy Circumscriber and able to win against a wounded one following a heavy struggle. If it’s much stronger now than it was then—”

  —He never got to finish.

  Across the grimwoods, footfalls rang out like a cavalry charge. At once every Witchfinder present was on edge and raising his gun, backing away, keeping eyes out on their flanks. Things had changed in an instant. Whatever was coming numbered more than just one, more than a dozen.

  It came as no surprise when the peelers emerged. Any Witchfinder knew how to recognise their gait, and they had been warned already it was a vampire they hunted. Even still, the sheer volume of rotting monsters swarming at them was a fearsome sight. Fifty, perhaps, if not more. Enough to mob even their coterie, were luck on the undead’s side.

  There was no running now, and every Witchfinder present calculated as much in an instant. So instead of turning and exposing their backs, they took the scarce moments to ready muskets and fire. Five shots, five impacts, ten holes as each hardened lead ball punched through the front and exploded out the back of a peeler.

  About half of them fell, bullets ripping into spines and turning off the legs connected to them. None of the Witchfinders tried to reload, they just dropped their muskets and drew pistols. The next volley was less than a second in coming, and if anything more devastating than the first. Slower rounds made for messier wounds.

  But there were still a good forty peelers left, and more than thirty by the time a third volley tore more holes into their heads and necks. Then the sabres came out as Witchfinders diffused and started swinging. Everything became buried in the concentrated violence, fast and sharp and forceful, mad and deadly in ways that defied thought or strategy. This was the primal part of the fight where training stopped existing and sheer brutality was all that carried a man to the end.

  That, and his physical abilities of course, and not a single Witchfinder here had Attributes lower than 24. The peelers were just Workers, in the end, with bodies not made stronger, but swifter and wilder as madness ate their brains and necromantic magics caused them to attack with a deranged vigour. Sometimes that was enough, combined with numbers, but seven-on-one was far from the golden ratio they needed against the force their efforts were meeting now.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Roars and grunts of exertion rang out like a battle-cry as heavy steel blades went up and came down, chopping off limbs or heads, opening torsos down to the bone and organs. Geoff caught an especially small peeler right at its midriff and sliced the beast fully in half, his eyes actually watering at the reek of rotted organs spilling out in all directions and forming a congealed puddle underfoot. His allies were matching his success.

  And the peelers just kept coming, raking nails against chainmail and latching onto arms or ankles with bites that would split a bedpost in half.

  Two or three died each second, and the fighting was over in under half a minute, but by the end of it each Witchfinder had at least a few wounds. Light ones. Parted skin dribbling out slivers of blood, an eye swollen closed over here, an ear clawed away there. Geoff felt the back of his knee throbbing where one enterprising peeler had chewed away at it for most of the fight, finally managing to bite past chain links and open up the flesh. Might’ve hamstrung him if he’d not staved its head in soon enough.

  The peelers were gone. So why were all his nerves still spasming in fear?

  “Something else,” one of his peers gasped, “we need to leave…”

  They never got the chance.

  Sure enough, a new enemy erupted from the grimwoods. This one was bigger, darker. A great patch of grey flesh and bare skin, ridged and sharp with talons, bony protrusions, narrow eyes and narrower nostrils and needled, armour-killing teeth.

  This time, none of the Witchfinders had a shot ready in any of their guns. Their sabres were up and prepared, but moved more sluggishly than they would have been for the slowing weights of pain and fatigue. They’d held nothing back in their brief fight, had no choice but to squeeze all their energy into it at once. Over ten seconds of full-intensity motion tired a man out.

  Even a Witchfinder.

  Before the nearest of them could swing, he was bowled over by the new threat.

  It was a crashing carriage meeting a pedestrian; a contest of forces as one-sided as any Geoff had yet seen. The Witchfinder went down with barely time to scream, his blade bouncing impotently from the creature’s skin at too awkward an angle to leave injury.

  The creature’s own fangs had no such issue. While the remaining four Witchfinders closed as one to help, it leaned down and bit upon the throat of their ally. He was near-decapitated by the slicing teeth, blood erupting outwards and staining the monster. His twitches and gurgling lasted only another second or two once it rose. A fast death, at least. Geoff could only hope for life, or a faster one still.

  The latter seemed to be his more likely option, for the vampire came to rush at him like a pistol round. He timed his sabre, saw a feint coming well in advance, then swung with all his strength and no small serving of luck. The steel blade ran right down his enemy’s face. It would’ve opened a man’s head to the skull, but Geoff had seen shaving cuts deeper than the mark left upon this target’s greyed flesh. No time for a second strike, Geoff felt it slam a shoulder into him and knock him right down. Blood welled up in his mouth and ribs broke, agony speared him, settled in his stomach like someone had lit a bonfire under the lungs and elected to leave it there.

  He watched, through teary eyes, as his allies forced the vampire back with their own slashes, opening up little gashes on its skin that would annoy more than slow it and healed up even as he watched.

  One of the younger Witchfinders got in too close, seeming to forget the great talons they could all see jutting from the vampire’s fingers. He was dead before realizing his mistake. A single swipe and chainmail surrendered, skin parted, guts decided they could find better accommodations than inside his torso and slithered out to tangle in his moving legs. He actually tripped on his own entrails. It would’ve been funny, were the punchline not a man’s death.

  That left three of them, once Geoff was on his feet and attacking with the others.

  Now the vampire was backing away, but giving no sign of retreating. They tried to surround it, to attack from its blindspots and mark the stone-hard body with slashes it couldn’t roll with. They failed. The thing was too fast, and with a single step it would reverse the distance claimed by two or three of theirs. Their sole advantage was reach, sabres proving longer by five or ten times than those damned talons, but that was a trifling advantage compared to the difference in physical power between them and what, until a minute ago, they had stupidly regarded as prey.

  A lucky stab from one Witchfinder saw his blade driven maybe an inch deep at the vampire’s neck. It cut his head off before he could even smile at the stroke of fortune.

  Geoff saw his chance, then, though, and lunged. He didn’t strike with his sabre, but with the pouch he’d kept at his side for just this opportunity. It struck the vampire, adhered to its chest as the slow match attached to it burned and caught the powder within.

  Not black powder. Magnesium.

  It burned like a second sun, and Geoff knew it was only the prodigious Toughness of his eyes that let him stare at the searing flame without risk of harming his sight. The vampire hissed and snarled, stumbling away, clawing at the wound. It was no use. The creatures that called themselves Varkuun were vulnerable to both magnesium and the product of its burning, those fires would sear him as they would a common Worker, and Geoff would finish the creature before—it knocked the burning satchel away with scarcely a mark on it.

  He stared, froze, tried to make sense of what he’d seen. By the time he did, his last remaining ally had already fallen and his sabre had been sent flying from his grip. Geoff roared out in defiance and fear, drawing a backup blade and stabbing it right over the monster’s heart.

  Magnesium, too, this one. It should have been like stabbing a common Worker. The blade snapped instead, this time not even able to break the vampire’s skin. Less effective than steel.

  “Not Varkuun,” he croaked, though could not understand it. He stared at the thing. Transformed like a bestial monster, too weak to access all but the most primitive Classes. Every report he had demanded that the thing was of the Varkuun Lineage, and yet—

  It grabbed his throat, staring deep into his eyes, and then, ridiculously, it spoke. In a garbled, near-incoherent tone that he could scarcely make sense of, but it spoke.

  “Bad guess,” the creature gurgled, “I’m something new.”

  Geoff would never find out what that was.