The Hard Way
Inside the house, the stench of necromancy was overpowering. I closed my mouth and breathed out through my nose. It didn’t help. The Vicks Vaporub I had applied liberally to my nostrils and upper lip worked great against the natural smells of decomposition. But undead shenanigans cut right through it; there really was nothing to be done for it. You just got used to it after a while, I guess.
I never did. Of course, had I actually picked necromancy as a discipline, I doubt you would have heard of me at all. It’s a (forgive me) dying art. The only guy out of my graduating class that actually majored in necromancy is working for the government, currently attempting to resuscitate dead presidents in the hopes of gleaning historical and political wisdom. Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.
I thought about him as I walked into the remnants of stately Machen Manor. There was no light, even at dusk, and the contrast was startling. Mrs. Machen was right, after all; her house was host to an actual supernatural event. I conjured a couple of sprites up and bound them in a circle above my head. Their illumination only penetrated a few feet in front of me. But the sonic pulse I manifested actually reverberated through the clapboard walls of the house and shattered a glass vase in the front hallway. So, this energy eater, whatever it was, was picky. Yes to light, no to sound. I wracked my brain for anything that could have possibly gotten loose on this side of the planet and came up with pretty much nothing. Okay, I said to no one in particular, we’re going to have to do this the hard way.
I opened up a channel to the Aether and surrounded myself with nullfire. The heat was comforting, and best of all, free of light. Nothing for the thing to draw off of me. I traced a few sigils in the air, watched them glow briefly, and then seemingly dissipate. Now I was effectively encased in armor, and about as encumbered, too. But it was either that or risk a nasty surprise when I rounded the wrong corner. And I couldn’t take that risk. I was too old to be doing this kind of field work, and too out of shape. But what choice did I have?
The house seemed to shift in the wind, a feat not technically possible, and then there came from somewhere upstairs a wail that cut through me like a thousand deaths. Everything about that sound was just wrong. With a slow and deliberate pace, I made my way silently to the great curved stairway leading up into darkness. Into madness.
As my feet touched the first step, I got that weird déjà vu feeling that I always got whenever I was about to walk into the mouth of something horrible and try to reason with it. That never works, by the way. Those glowing paperback book cover models you see in the movies? Not even close to what real vampires actually are. Not even close.
The first time I had to bell the proverbial cat was when I was fifteen years old. The Order of Five’s seventh level of mastery was to, and I’m quoting here, “grapple with the forces of darkness physically, so that you may appreciate all of the advantages a well-trained mind brings to bear on any given problem.” The monster was an incubus, and a particularly nasty one, at that. Jacked me up real good. The lesson I learned that day? All the smarts in the world are no substitute for a good swift punch in the nose. As soon as I got out of the hospital, I started weight training. In any case, I always remembered what that first ass-kicking felt like. That reminder served me well over the years in situations exactly like this one.
I went up the steps, loaded for bear with magical energy crackling all around me. The darkness was absolute; even the sprites were no good. I was literally moving blind, and of course, I was so taken with trying to see the darkness that I hadn’t counted on what would happen when I finally pierced it.
Light filtered in slowly at the top of the landing, moving like fog in the gloom. I was staring into an open door; a bedroom, from the looks of it. Three additional doors flanked me on the landing, to the left. My hand touched the wall on the right. It was a tight squeeze. There was nowhere to go but up into the bedroom, or take my chances with the other doors. I tried to ease my way over the railing, to the left, and that’s when the Vhardilak jumped me.
The monster was naked and pale, his spindly arms reaching all the way around my chest, the bat-like membrane between the upper arm and the chest covering my mouth, and the smell of an unnatural death, all hit me at once and we tumbled down the hallway. I started to throw up, but the surge of adrenaline shot through my body and suppressed all other bodily instincts save one: fight or flight. I chose the former and pushed the thing off of me with my legs.
The Vhardilak hissed and said something in Romanian, and the sounds coming out of its ruined voice box made me want to try flight instead. I tuned out my fear and sent a wave of nullfire at the vampire. The indigo flames singed off what was left of its hair, but aside from that, did little to check its forward lunge. We toppled again, and this time, he came up on top.
Before I could utter a spell, his jaw unhinged itself into a terrible gaping maw and it lunged at my neck. The defensive spell held, but just barely. Snapping at the air between us, the monster leaned back and said something else in Romanian. All at once, I felt my life leaving my body in nauseating waves. With my last breath, I gasped out the command that summoned the sigils around us. He looked up, surprised, and that movement alone was enough to set them off. One two three four five explosions rocked the monster and he slumped, stunned, over me. I felt energy surging into me and I rolled the Vhardilak off of me and dropped a rebuke upon him. The thing gasped, howled, and then caught fire—real fire, this time. I held it down with my foot, which was protected by my spells. It struggled for a full minute, flailing its useless limbs. I waited until it was little more than charred bone and ash, and then I staggered back outside, where I finally threw up on the front lawn.
Mrs. Machen was waiting in her limousine, the engine idling, in case I was unsuccessful and she had to make a dignified getaway. She opened the door as I was standing up, wiping my mouth with my last good handkerchief.
She nodded her wizened head in approval, ignoring my sick with the kind of fortitude that only the very rich can manage. “Mr. Elliot,” she said crisply, “I take it by your presence here on the lawn and the foul smoke trailing out of my house that the job is completed?”
“Yeah, it’s done,” I said, pocketing the handkerchief. “And you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I added.
She allowed a faint smile to cross her face. “My mistake was trusting my husband with the grimoire. The old fool. Now that he’s been supernaturally killed, my insurance company has refused to honor his policy. That thing in there has cost me literally tens of millions of dollars.”
“That thing in there was your husband, or at least, he once was. You could show a little more respect.”
She humphed at me, as if to suggest that I had no idea what I was talking about. Then she smiled at me. “I believe I read in the papers that your license was reinstated. Is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s right,” I answered, wondering where this was going.
“As an expert in the occult, perhaps you’d be willing to testify as to the nature and circumstances surrounding my husband’s death?”
I made a show of dusting off my suit coat, while I fought to keep from saying exactly what I wanted. That was the main difference between being a licensed hero and a freelancer; no repercussions on you if the client got a earful.
“Mrs. Machen,” I finally said, “I’ll be honest with you. You hired me to cleanse your home, which is something that I wouldn’t normally do, as it is beneath me and my abilities. But as I have a certain amount of community service hours that I must undertake, I agreed to help you. And right away, this job revealed itself to be a set-up. You and your husband were researching immortality. You summoned a vampire into your home, thinking you could not only control it, but study it and extract its secrets. But you had no idea what you were doing, and it got free and killed and ate your husband.
“Now that I’ve disposed of the monster for you, you want me to testify in a court hearing as to the ‘accidental death’ of your husband. Did I miss anything there? Would you agree that’s the sum total of our dealings to date?”
She wasn’t smiling now; the kindly grandmother act was gone. In its place was a cold, calculating stare. “That about sums it up,” she said.
I smiled at her. It was my only weapon. “I’m sorry, but the answer is no. That thing nearly killed me. Had I known what I was going to be up against, I either wouldn’t have taken the case, or at least charged a fee. Now you want to make a profit off of your cavalier mistake. I can’t be a party to that, Mrs. Machen.”
“I see,” she hissed. “Then I’m afraid under the circumstances that I cannot sign off on your community service hours.”
“I’ll take the hit, Mrs. Machen. Ten hours’ time in exchange for me keeping my license and my self-respect is a fair trade.”
She shook her head, and then the matronly smile was back. She patted me on my arm, and then requested that I do something that was anatomically impossible. I took the hint, hitched a ride on a passing ley line, and teleported far away from Mrs. Machen and her formerly vampire-infested mansion.
