Page 4 of Time's Fool

Or it did until I pulled out a knife.

“I’m surprised you didn’t draw a stake,” he said, apparently unconcerned. I showed him the other end of the knife, which had a pointed wooden tip that was as wickedly sharp as the blade. “Ah, yes. That would do it.”

“Let me go or we’ll find out!”

The creature did not let me go. He did, however, throw a large bag onto the table. One that spilled open to reveal—

The sailor cursed and started scrabbling at the shield—uselessly, of course, but he was too drunk to know that. I felt much the same, staring at more money than I’d seen in . . . well, ever. A king’s ransom in gold had cascaded over the table, making a glittering river that dazzled me with the possibilities.

Feeding a dhampir metabolism alone was a full-time occupation; trying to find shelter and clothing—the latter of which frequently didn’t survive a hunt—even more so. And that didn’t even take into account the magical tools needed for my trade, which I couldn’t make and which witches and wizards charged a pretty penny for. But this . . . this could keep me for years. Years in which I could travel, see more of the world, try to find other dhampirs and learn about my kind. Years in which I could pick the jobs I wanted, instead of having to work for low-life scum I didn’t trust because the alternative was destitution. Years in which I could breathe.

I slowly sat back down.

“What do you want?”

* * *

A short time later, I stumbled out of nothingness half a continent away, in sunny southern England.

At least, I assumed that was where we were, as the vampire had said it was our destination. And I supposed that it was sunny, since I could feel the heat on my face. But I wasn’t sure of either since I was half blind, still seeing vivid, otherworldly colors streaming past my vision.

They weren’t there anymore, as we were now back in the normal world, although my sense of balance didn’t seem to know that. I wasn’t sure that my stomach did, either. It was threatening revolt even as I tried to act like I did this every day.

It didn’t work, because nobody did this every day.

We’d just taken a portal through the ley lines, raging rivers of metaphysical energy that flow around the Earth and which the magically powerful used to flit about like the ancient gods. Assuming you had the money for one of the fantastically expensive devices that that sort of thing required, it could shave weeks or even months off a journey. Yet I wasn’t sure that I didn’t prefer taking the long route.

That wasn’t merely because my insides felt like they had been rearranged. The trip had been harrowing, but even more so was urgency with which the vamp was acting. It made me suspect that we were dealing with more than the mere revenant attack he had claimed.

And that was before my vision cleared, and left me blinking in shock at dozens of vampires.

I knew they were masters, the highest rank for vamps, because they were walking around in broad daylight without so much as a flinch. And looking seriously out of place in their elegant clothes, the kind that could easily have graced a royal court instead of a humble village. Where they were piling up the corpses of what looked like every person in it.

It must have been market day, with stalls selling eggs, butter, cheese and meat lining the one street that the town seemed to boast. It wasn’t a large fair, just the usual local thing where farmers from the surrounding area came in to buy their necessities and down an ale or two with their friends. Only someone had downed them instead.

A group of dead coneys spilled out of a basket beside a nearby stall, their heads lolling like those of the people around them. A dog keened over the body of his master, licking the man’s face in a vain attempt to wake him up. Chickens clucked nervously at each other in cages, unsure what was going on.

I could sympathize.

Whatever had happened here, it had been fast. I was looking at a village of the dead, many of whom still had baskets over their arms filled with the day’s purchases. A man had bought himself a new belt that was coiled like a snake in the dirt beside him. A woman had a skein of yarn that had come loose and become tangled around a vamp’s leg, making him curse when he tried to move her.

A child had a pie that someone had bought him, now trodden in the dirt.

I stared at the chubby hand lying limp beside a spill of blond hair. And then at the vamp who was handling him with more care than the others. He laid the boy gently on a pile after checking him over, I wasn’t sure for what.

Then I understood: the bodies with bite marks were going into one heap, and those without into another. And they weren’t the bites of vampires, clean and neat and studied. Even if the vamp hadn’t told me we were on a revenant hunt, I’d have known as soon as I saw them.

They’d been savaged.

Others had simply had their necks snapped, like an overly excited fox in a henhouse, that doesn’t know when to stop. Yet all of them were being checked, all were being sorted. Revenants shouldn’t have been able to make new vampires, or even more misbegotten copies of themselves, as that was an ability reserved for masters alone.

But nobody was taking chances.

The bitten were being loaded into carts, to be taken off somewhere to wait out the three days it took to see if they would turn. Meanwhile, a series of long trenches were being dug, I assumed for the rest. But there was a third group set apart from the others, under the spreading limbs of a great oak that nobody was approaching.

Maybe it was their ragged clothes and dirty limbs that were the cause, which were enough to make any self-respecting beggar wrinkle his nose in disdain. They were also smoking slightly despite the shade, smoldering in areas where the dappled sunlight filtered through the leaves. Yet, despite that, it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.

Then all the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

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