“It shouldn’t take her very long. Go on,” Ruvan urges.
I step off to the side. I can feel their eyes trailing me around the room. Drew told me how to read the signs of battle…but only in an academic way. He told me about tracking by blood drops and how footprints could shape the tides of a fight. We never had a reason to practice it. We never expected me to go into the hunt. After taking a full turn around the hall, I come to a stop before Ruvan.
“You faced many enemies.”
“How many?”
“I…I would guess about thirty.” I’m honestly not sure. This isn’t my forte.
Ruvan smiles thinly. “Closer to twenty.”
“We really should keep going,” Winny presses.
But Ruvan is relentless. “What else do you see?”
“Ventos fought here.” I point to a spot on the floor at the center of a wide arc of blood. “With a blade that large and heavy there’s only so many attacks he could make…and the pattern of the blood supports it.”
“Go on.”
“Lavenzia was here.” I point to a different spot. I might not be a hunter, but I know weapons and how combatants will use them. My life’s work has been spent focusing on that. Maybe that will be enough to bluff my way through whatever test Ruvan is trying to put me through. “Her rapier requires finesse; a rapier relies on speed and accuracy. However, managing distance is also critical with a weapon like that. Your footwork leaves lines across the ground as you move past the enemies you kill.”
“And me?”
“You…” I lose my words for a moment as my eyes return to the vampire lord. He is the only one whose movements I can clearly envision through the room. “You fight like a hunter would.” I can almost feel where his attacks landed. How he moved. He moves like me in combat—like Drew.
It’s no wonder that we were so well matched in those ruins in the Fade Marshes. He knows all my attacks before I make them. All of my movements before I can think them. Just as I know his. But why? Did he force hunters here to train him? Or does he have some kind of records of how the hunters fight? I suspect the latter given his earlier statements about records on hunters.
He continues to study me, expression unreadable.
“Can we move along now?” Winny asks. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Indeed.” Ruvan finally relents and strides forward. I fall into place at his right hand.
We continue down into the depths of the castle. The rooms begin to blur together, a collage of darkness and dried blood. Every forgotten battlefield as a portrait of a fight long passed. In every one, there’s the footprints of people fighting against shapeless shadow enemies. But who those people are begins to change. No longer am I confident it’s Ruvan and his covenant.
There were other people fighting these mysterious enemies throughout the years. I glance at the others, seeing if I can figure out a way to affirm my suspicion, but I’m silenced by their intense and distant stares. These are men and women haunted by battle and blood. They have the same eyes as hunters returning from the marshes after a full moon.
I begin to glean more information from the endless parade of blood splatters and upturned tables. These monstrous vampires we’re hunting are no bigger or smaller in build than our own party. Though they seem fast, and strong, based off the deep gouges that look almost like claws. So much blood, so many battles…yet no bodies.
That’s the most disconcerting part of it all.
“Why are there no bodies?” I whisper.
It’s a long time before Ruvan answers, “They eat the flesh of the dead.”
I ask nothing more.
Winny continues darting ahead and back. She makes hand motions and nods in Ruvan’s direction. A code that only they seem to understand. Even though I’m not privy to their secret language, I know it’s not good when she returns, her usually tanned skin blanched almost a complete white.
Everyone huddles together to hear her whisper.
“Ahead, at least fifteen of them. There’s—”
Ruvan clamps his hand over her mouth. I jerk my chin in the direction she came from, eyes narrowing. The hair on my arms stands on end. The air is electrified.
The vampire lord must also hear the slow scraping—like nails on stone. There’s a lower noise, too. Heavier. Breathing, I realize. It’s ragged gasps drawn through a slack jaw. The vampires around me shift their stances. My heart begins to race, pumping the rush of the impending battle through my veins.
From the darkness, the monster I’ve been waiting for emerges.
