Who: Carrick When: Week 4, Monday night very late Where: The thickly forested hills out of town What: Carrick has a debt to repay to the gods. Rating: violence. Status: one-off standalone post
Carrick jumped nimbly back down into the hollow where he had found the cave entrance and studied the placement of the boulders blocking the entrance. One more should do it, he thought to himself. He only needed to create a small hole; the Duchess was not a large woman.
Fitting his back against the boulder, he braced himself and pushed back with all his strength. He gritted his teeth, summoning every ounce of his ancient strength and ignoring the growing pain in his shoulders. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the rock began to move. It scraped along the forest floor, bringing down smaller rocks with it as it moved.
There was a screech, and a flurry of roosting bats emerged from the cave. With a movement too quick to follow, the vampire snatched one out of the air and sank his fangs into the body, draining int in one swallow. He was fond enough of the little creatures, liking the way they flitted so noiselessly through the shadows. They were like him. But a man had to eat, and it had been a long, tiring night.
He glanced at the sky. There were only a couple of hours left until dawn. He needed to quicken his pace.
A few more minutes work and he had cleared the final boulders, making a hole about a yard across. He crouched on the edge of the hole and leaned forwards. It was exactly what he needed - an empty cavern, far from any mark of civilisation. The only company down there would be the occasional burrowing animal. They might be enough to keep her alive for months. Fitting, for a snake like the Duchess.
Carrick stood and returned to the limp bundle that was lying under the tree where he left it. The woman who had taken and tortured his beloved slave boy lay immobile, a wooden stake protruding from her chest. She was paralysed by the wood that pierced her heart, but she stared up at Carrick with eyes full of hate.
"Your Grace," he said quietly, with a clipped, short bow. "Your chambers are ready. Permit me to escort you to your new home." He bent and picked her up without ceremony, throwing her carelessly over one shoulder. He dumped her by the edge of the cavern, angling her head so that she could see over the edge.
"It's a sad fate, outliving one's entire dynasty," he said, the bite of a cold fury in his words. "But for you it seems fitting. The boy was mine, Duchess. All those men and women you had torture and brutalise him - all your friends and flunkies - they'll be dead by the end of the week, I promise you that. And we both know I'm subtle enough not to get caught. They'll just... vanish. One at a time. It will be like they never existed. You though... you'll starve here. This is your grave, Duchess. That stake in your heart will rot away over time, but when it does, you'll still be buried deep underground. Nobody will find you here. You'll rot here forever."
He straightened up and gathered his thoughts. Holding out his hands, palm upwards in the age-old posture of supplication to the gods Carrick began to pray aloud in his native Greek. "Lord Hades - Host of Many, Receiver of the Dead. You gave my eremenos back to me when he stood between this world and the next. This is my gift to you. A woman of rank and title, whose heart is blacker than the darkest pit of Tarturus," He sang softly under his breath, an ancient hymn praising the dark and cheerless lord of the dead.
When he turned to face the Duchess again, he gave a dark smile. "Back in the old days, we used to honour Hades by beating on the ground. You'll be doing plenty of that, I'm sure. You should be flattered. You might be the first undead offering to Nekrodegmon on this entire continent."
Without another word, he placed the sole of his boot against the Duchess' back and shoved hard, pushing her over the edge. There was a meaty thud as she hit the rocky floor of the cave below, but when he leaned over the edge to check, he was pleased to see the stake was still in place.
It took Carrick another hour to manouvere the rocks back into place and seal up the entrance to the cave. When he finished the sky was lightning and his skin had begun to itch and tighten where it was exposed to the rising sun.
He retreated to a shadowy spot under the nearby trees and stripped off his clothes. There was no way he would make it back home before sunrise, or even to his car. He would have to spend the day in the earth and return home after sunset. He chose as stone-free a spot as he could and began to dig, his vampiric speed making him a blur of movement. By the time the sun risen, he was sleeping in a newly dug grave under the pine trees and the Duchess was silently cursing both Carrick and the boy he had come to love.