Page 26 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

“Wake. Up.”

I started awake, and tried to lurch upright on instinct, but couldn’t because a firm grip held my shoulders down. Atrius leaned over me, serious and perhaps just a little bit annoyed. Sweat plastered my clothing to my body. The fire, nearly encroaching on my toes, blazed high, a wall of light that silhouetted Atrius’s form.

“Why did you wake me?” The wordscame out in heaving gasps.

“I know the signs of a seering gone bad.”

He released my shoulders and rose, leaving me to push myself to my hands and knees, wincing as my bare feet touched the gritty sand. The wounds were deep.

“We’ll get you healing for those,” he said, nodding to my feet. Then he added, after an awkward beat, “Your feet.”

“I know what you meant,” I said, irritated. I rubbed my temple, which throbbed viciously.

I did not mourn my eyesight. But… all the darkness of traditional sight made it difficult to shake away nightmares. What I had seen in the vision… that smiling face followed me back to the land of the mortals. I suspected it would follow me for days.

“Here.”

Atrius handed me a canteen. I was so parched I didn’t even question it—just grabbed it and gulped down mouthful after mouthful of water. When I was done, the canteen was empty, and I was still gasping for breath. I let the canteen fall to my lap. My hands were shaking.

I could feel Atrius’s eyes on them.

“So?” he said. “What did you see?”

“Give me a moment,” I muttered, rubbing my head. “I need to sort through it.”

It was hard to process visions while within them, floating in a semi-conscious dream state, incapable of truly questioning anything. Now, I rifled through the images and tried to string them together.

I’d seen Alka. The full moon was bloody. The crescent moon, much less so—and the bodies falling into the sea under that moon were of Alka’s men, not Atrius’s.

As far as visions went, it was actually a surprisingly useful one. But useful didn’t help me here.

Because did Iactuallywant to help Atrius conquer Alka?

No. Of course not.

I hadn’t thought this far ahead. I couldn’t claim that I saw nothing. That was clearly untrue, and it would mean Atrius would probably kill me and run off to go find a more useful seer.

I could make up something. Something truly nonsensical.

Or…

“The full moon,” I said. “Move for Alka under the full moon.”

It was an impulsive, risky lie. But I was not about to help Atrius kill hundreds or thousands of my kin. Besides, Alka was a difficult territory. There was a reason why Atrius was unwilling to move on it without the help of a seer. If he failed here, it could be enough to stop his progression completely.

And if he still managed a victory… seering was unpredictable and hard to understand. I could weave a story for him, build myself a net of reasonable doubt.

Atrius seemed dubious. “You’re certain?”

“I’m certain.”

“I want to know what else you saw.”

Content that my single lie would be enough, I told him the rest of my journey truthfully—of the king, the rocks, the mist. I even drew what I recalled of the arrangement of the channels for him. He wrote down all of this in a beaten-up little leather notebook that he withdrew from the pocket of his jacket, often stopping me to make me repeat descriptions verbatim.

I had to appreciate his thoroughness. At least he respected the art of seering more than I expected him to—understanding that it was about general interpretations, not questions and answers.

When I got to the end of the vision about Alka, I paused and observed him. He was finishing writing the last description I had fed him, sitting cross-legged in the sand, his head bowed over his work—leaving those horns on full display.

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