Bats are surprisingly nimble little bastards when they’re flapping for their lives. I could catch up to Agatha no problem; I did so many times, but whenever my jaws snapped closed around where she should have been, she was somewhere else.

  I would overshoot, gain altitude and pivot about to dive at her again as she flitted between the sparse trees that survived along the edges of the fields outside of Fidler’s Mill. I tried blasts of fire, but after four melted hedgerows, I decided to stop pissing off my local peasantry. Life was hard enough for the farmers without me making it worse.

  My rage had cooled a little, and I had a little more control of myself. Wrath still looked like Beelzebub, a giant of fire and ash, in my mind, but I had a target. A victim upon whom I could vent my rage. Assuming I could catch the bitch.

  “You won’t catch me!” she chirped at me in a screechy bat-voice.

  I answered with a snap of my jaws that she evaded deftly.

  “Venerunt Vespertiliones!” she squeaked as one wing slapped against my snout.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Venerunt Vespertiliones

  I didn’t have a clue where they came from, but within seconds, she was surrounded by a swarm of almost identical flying rodents. I let loose a breath attack and incinerated the bulk of them, but all the kill notifications told me was that I’d just saved the lives of a few thousand moths. I’d missed the vampire.

  Not being terribly concerned about insect biodiversity at the moment, I attacked again, sweeping the orange-green fire across most of the bats that remained. If there were a spate of holes in clothes due to a booming moth population, I could live with that. None of the bats had broken away from the formation and bolted, so she must be in there somewhere. And there weren’t many of them left for her to hide amongst.

  A circle of trees, maybe some ancient grove dedicated to the god of branches or something, was where she led me. I snapped and snarled but failed to remove the last few companions. They were the wily ones, the ones smart enough to get the hell out of the way of a set of jaws the size of a small car.

  She transformed back into her human form as she reached the centre of the glade and raised a hand at me as she gasped for breath. I did not stop. My claws swiped at her head, which she ducked, but one of my tails sent her tumbling to slam against a treetrunk.

  I landed in the centre of the grove and moved slowly towards her. My tails flicked back and forth, poised to lash out and spear her at any more attempts to escape.

  “Why?”

  “We work for money, Bob. You were a particularly difficult target, though. Too tough for normal means. Too dangerous to try and drain.” She dragged herself to her feet and gave me a slight curtsey.

  “Crossbows won’t work on me, so why bother?” I growled.

  “Oh, you weren’t the target at that point, dear Bob. No. We needed to annoy you enough to keep chasing us.”

  “We?”

  “Us.” A male voice, where there shouldn’t be one, can be quite disturbing. Think ladies' changing rooms, or like this: an empty glade that should only contain a soon-to-be-dead female vampire and me.

  The crafty bats hadn’t been bats at all. More goddamn vampires. Half a dozen spread out in a circle around me. They each held up their left wrists and sliced them with a claw that formed on a finger on the other hand. The blood flowed out but not down.

  It spread between them, then upwards to form a net around me. I began to suspect that I might have made a mistake.

  “You really, really were a sweetheart, Bob. I’m so sorry about this,” Agatha said sadly. “You could have been so amusing for a long time, but contracts are contracts, and I’m afraid I have no choice.”

  “You shouldn’t be able to stop yourself around me,” I growled, taking a step towards her, showering gold and purple sparks around me.

  “You aren’t that handsome in either form. I’ve been alive for a long time, Bob.”

  “I meant I’m the champion of Bulb, you assholes should just attack me on sight.”

  Her red lips curved upwards into a faint smile. “But we have done, Bob.”

  Without warning, the net contracted, pinning my wings to my sides and hampering my movements. I felt like a dolphin in tuna waters. They didn’t speak or scream a battle cry. Red weapons sprang up in their hands, swords, spears, scythes. One of them rushed at me wielding a worryingly phallic mace. I am reasonably confident it was a mace, but having met the nobles of Ankmapak, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Blood-dildo guy took a tail swat to the face that sent him tumbling away, then the fight began in earnest. Wrath had swelled up again, consuming my mind. They’d hurt Esme just to piss me off, and succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  My tails speared out, impaling a pair of them, but when they hit the dirt afterwards, they climbed bonelessly back to their feet and launched another attack. A claw swipe ripped one of the gang in half, but thick red strands stretched between the two pieces and dragged them back together. How the hell was I supposed to kill these bastards?

  “I can do this all day,” I sneered, lifting an impaled vampire above my maw to drop her in. She turned into a bat and flittered off to one side. Damnit.

  “I’m afraid we can’t. Just all night,” Agatha replied before leaping forward with a blood-forged rapier, stabbing at my eye. I ducked aside and slammed her away with the side of my head. Her sword skittered over my scales and failed to penetrate.

  I lunged to the side, pinning her down with a claw and bringing my jaws down to snip off her limbs.

  “Sanguis Caligo!” she snapped.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Sanguis Caligo

  She dissolved into a red mist and reformed to one side, then punched me in the side of the snout. It hurt.

  “That wasn’t blood magic?” I asked as I desperately tried to figure out a way out of this. They hadn’t found a way through my armour yet, but sooner or later, they would.

  “Most vampires rarely use their blood powers. It can be tiring, but you really are tough.” Agatha spun to one side like a dancer as a tail smashed down where she’d been, then jumped backwards to avoid being impaled by the tip of another.

  I finally managed to snatch up one of her companions and shovel him into my mouth. I chomped down, then my mouth exploded in pain. I spat out a ball of red spikes, then slammed down a paw to crush it into the dirt. Not my smartest move. Prickly.

  “How the fuck do I kill you assholes? Abiit Mendax!” Agatha froze as her hands flew to cover her mouth. Her sword lay on the ground for a moment before dissolving and sliding across to meld with her foot like she was a crimson T-1000.

  I lunged and snatched her up, spinning round and using my tails to batter away the others attacking me. “C’mon, spit it out!” I snarled. I was pinning her arms in place with my grip, but she could move her hands if she wanted to.

  I tried to stretch my wings, but the net kept them pinned at my sides. For some reason, they had made no attempt to damage them. They’d avoided touching them like…

  The ring! The Nardshire stone, or whatever it was called, had a laser attack. It was the only item I’d bother to keep on me from Bulb’s loot.

  I hopped into the air, using my tails to help spin me in a rapid circle as I held out my left forepaw like a woman showing off that she got engaged to a rich guy. It took an effort of will to activate the weapon. It turned out the overblown laser-pointer gear might need to go into my regular rotation of random gear.

  A column of light leapt out, carving a foot-deep trench in the dirt where it passed. The vampires weren’t so lucky. They got chopped in half, lost limbs or their heads. They didn’t grow back or rejoin this time. The rest of their bodies turned to ash.

  As they vanished, the blood-net faded. One turned into a bat, but before they got six feet, I’d sent a blast of fire to incinerate him. He didn’t dodge this time.

  Ancient Vampire slain.

  Gold earned!

  One hundred and thirty-three gold added to the Hoard.

  They were all like that. I’d gotten hundreds of grand for an ancient dragon. Each vampire was only worth a couple of hundred at most.

  “Why are you so cheap?” I snapped, shaking Agatha back and forth in my fist.

  “Angel feathers or light will kill us! Ye Gods! My coven has been with me for… You bastard, Bob. You could have sent us packing!”

  “You tried to kill me, and you’re pissed I didn’t just let you run away?”

  “It’s the code. If the assassin fails, you let them live.”

  I raised the Nardshire stone up and held it in her face, causing her to lean back in fear. “That sounds like a stupid code.”

  “It’s the way it’s always been. Joaquin was a master artist. He’s done paintings by moonlight that make mortals weep; his art graces the finest collections in the world! Laspera had an exquisite singing voice! Five centuries of lessons! Three goddamn centuries, at least, of them were like living next door to a cat spaying factory! All lost!”

  “I’m sorry to have killed some talented–”

  “And Rupert. Poor, sweet Rupert. You should have seen him dance, Bob. He was a once-in-a-generation talent even before his decades of practice.”

  “I really don’t give a shit about art, music, or dancing, Agatha.” Wrath was taking over again, but I still needed answers to a few things.

  “So kill me then. I’ve spent generations refining the sexual arts. I can make every nerve in a man’s or woman’s body sing to the tune I play. I’ve had lovers start wars, kill their husbands or wives, eat their own children just for another taste of my body.”

  “I don’t care– come again?”

  “That’s what they all want.” She licked her lips slowly. “I could do things for you, Bob. I could take you to heaven and back.”

  I flapped my wings, stretching them out from their recent constraints and getting the blood flowing again. As a lizard, I was largely immune to this kind of thing. Had I been in the mammal-suit, and if Wrath hadn’t been quite so worked up, it might have worked. As it was, Lust was hiding in the corner behind Greed and Vanity.

  “Let’s go for a flight, you and me,” I told her.

  My wings beat hard, and I couldn’t help but notice that all her struggles only helped to highlight her cleavage where it protruded above my grip. Her ninja pyjamas had some split open below her chin, revealing pale flesh and deep shadows.

  We flew upwards, and I turned east. She pestered me and chattered away as I kept her clenched in a fist, trying to talk me into landing for some physical experiences that frankly would have made a professional courtesan blush. I fobbed her off. Told her just a little longer.

  “You really do need to tell me something before I agree to spare you,” I said after a few hours of flight.

  “Tell? It’s what I can do to you, for you, that matters, dearest Bob.”

  “Will Dalgliesh know that you’ve failed?”

  “He doesn’t know we set out. Once we accept a contract, we don’t speak to the buyer until the job is done, sometimes not even then. Killing Hateskale was like that. Everyone would have known the job was done within hours of its accomplishment, and most people fear to tread in the Library to check up on us.”

  “Even Big Kenny?” I had kept her clenched against my chest so she couldn’t see the gradually lightening sky.

  “He goes where he likes, but he’d still knock before entering our demesne.”

  “How would you fight him?” I asked.

  “Seduction and poison. He is just a mortal man after all, and all men are slaves to the brains they keep in their crotches. Come, my sweet, let’s find a riverbank somewhere and make love. Have you ever had a human woman in your dragon form? It will be wonderful to feel that again.”

  “You want to feel my cloaca? I’m sorry, Agatha, I’m not that kind of dragon. Besides, you shot Esme, so you’ve only got until the sun comes up, which should be right about…now. I’ll give your regards to Bulldo.”