++ A Vampire Barony can begin anywhere, though there are certain conditions that make them easier for the foul creatures to found. Isolation helps, political instability among the local elven rulership helps more. And, of course, if the ambitious vampire attempting to make one happens to be especially strong, then that helps most of all.++

  Book 2: Chapter 15

  Norvhan hadn’t changed much, again. Reggie didn’t know why he kept expecting it to, Norvhan was filled with people and people just didn’t change.

  Granted, the arrival of new ones was certainly threatening to shake things up a bit. He sighted two Witchfinders still, and easily half a dozen Circumscribers. More study, his undead eyes slicing through darkness and fog with ease, revealed more detail. There weren’t just Circumscribers there, all but two of them were of the same group who’d killed him.

  At that, Reggie found himself fighting back a growl and wrestling with the urge to run out and start taking off limbs. Six on one, still not favourable odds for him at all. He’d be patient. For now.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked Ludvich. Despite the difference in their Tiers, the ex-Witchfinder actually had about the same degree of sensory prowess Reggie did. Both their Enhanced Senses were still at the first level. If anything Ludvich was seeing more, his decades of hunting and stalking in just this environment took the innately supernatural sight of a vampire and further mutated it into something unimaginable.

  So there was no big surprise when he started rattling off every last feature Reggie had caught sight of, and a good few that he hadn’t.

  The walls had been altered in ways that he suspected made room for small cannons, likely loaded with grape or canister shot. By the Circumscribers’ patrols they were only reinforcing a wider surveillance put out by other people, probably a mix of trained soldiers and locals pressed into a combat role. Ludvich identified the amounts of gunpowder they’d be needing and where it was probably stored, listed off a few potential vulnerabilities, and even finished his larger assessment with a rather punchy summary that Reggie thought did well to put everything into a neat perspective.

  “We’re fucked, basically.”

  Reggie wasn’t so sure about that.

  “I want you to keep hanging back,” he told the young vampire. “In the meantime, it won’t just be us attacking, remember?”

  They’d found more peelers on their way, just a few since Reggie had seemed to almost empty out the grimwoods already by scrounging up more. Ludvich looked far from reassured, however.

  “You think the forces we’ve found so far are going to be enough?” Ludvich wasn’t hiding his scepticism, which was fine by Reggie. It did feel pretty well founded.

  “Stay with the undead,” he said after a moment. “I have a plan.”

  The plan in question was a big time sink, but Reggie had time to spare. From what they’d been able to tell Norvhan hadn’t actually sent anyone out on patrol, at least not pointedly towards the castle, so they weren’t dealing with some imminent attack, just the vague risk of someone stumbling onto the crowding undead now waiting quite close to town.

  About a score of soldier ants, plus a few other creatures that’d been unlucky enough to encounter them on their way. That was the safe force, Reggie was now on his way to fetch the dangerous one.

  Fortunately, it didn’t take him that long.

  Reggie hurried back, for fear of Ludvich having died or something in his absence. Fortunately the good people of Norvhan remained as stupid as ever, and had yet to find the twenty or so undead menaces squatting just half a mile from town.

  When the ex-Witchfinder saw what Reggie had on him, the man’s face fell.

  “What the fuck are you planning?”

  Reggie frowned at him. “I think it should be pretty obvious Ludvich, I’m carrying dead praetorian ants.”

  Apparently it was obvious, because Ludvich didn’t ask anymore questions and they were able to get moving shortly. They closed fast on the town, Reggie moving quietly, Ludvich moving silently and the stupid fucking dead ants doing their best but still resembling the sounds of a saucepan falling down the stairs.

  Only when they were close to the wall, close enough to be at risk of getting seen anyway, did Reggie transform and break into a run. Weighed down by the praetorians, he wasn’t nearly as fast as he could’ve been. He still would’ve left a horse in the dust. It took a good second or two for one of the people on the walls to see him, then another second for them to overcome their fear and call out a warning.

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  By then, Reggie had cleared dozens of paces and come close enough that he could throw his ant corpses high and ahead. They carried all his running momentum to sail right over the walls and land hard behind them.

  A few moments passed as guns were readied and orders given, then the praetorians finished reanimating and chaos broke out within Norvhan.

  There were not many things that would ruin an effort at organised defence quite like having enemies appear behind its outer perimeter, and that went triple for enemies that consisted of two undead Tier 3s. Everything started collapsing all at once, and Reggie saw only a few brief bursts of black smoke from atop the wall as three or four defenders managed to retain the cohesion needed to fire at his other undead while they attacked.

  Of course the bullets didn’t do much. Soldier ants weren’t tough enough to be outright immune to hardened lead balls, but they certainly had the durability, between Toughness and carapace, that such impacts wouldn’t be penetrating very deep. Made undead, like Reggie, the wounds they suffered didn’t even slow them down.

  Ludvich was not so durable, but he pulled well behind the shambling hordes to keep himself from being shot.

  Reggie could appreciate that tactic, how sensible it was. He didn’t employ it himself however. Why bother? He just kept running and grinned as a bullet struck him right in the temple. Thinnest part of the skull, but he didn’t feel the impact as more than a moment of pressure against his skin where the lead burst apart and splintered away from him. Then he was jumping.

  Before now, Reggie hadn’t seen how high he could jump. His Transformed body was heavier than his human one by a fair amount, maybe half again or even double the weight. He shouldn’t have gone that high, right?

  He jumped over Norvhan’s wall with about twenty yards of clearance and landed hard on its cobbled street. There was a terrible cracking sound as his bones crunched into stone.

  That poor stone, it never stood a chance.

  Inside the walls now, Reggie could see that things were not going well. For the townsfolk.

  One praetorian had already been killed and the last was now surrounded by three Circumscribers, all of whom looked like they had been taking their time in wearing it down, until realising that it wasn’t alone. Two of them were eying Reggie now and the third barely scrambled back in time as his undead opponent lunged unexpectedly.

  Maybe a hundred soldiers were swarming into the streets, all with muskets or pikes, while twice as many un-uniformed townspeople did much the same. It was an instinctively frightful force, but not one that Reggie took any intellectual fear at seeing.

  Even if his guts didn’t know it yet, his mind was well aware of how far beyond such enemies he was.

  So he ignored the Workers and looked out for the elves.

  Three fighting the praetorian, where were—Reggie jumped. The final Circumscriber almost carved into him from behind, she’d closed in so fast, but he was falling back before that magic sword of hers could find him. She snarled, raised it up and thrust for his face.

  Reggie snarled too. This was the one, the leader. Oleri. Her name was imprinted into his brain like someone had branded it there, eating away at him. All the simmering rage turned to boiling at once and he snarled, slashing open his wrist and sending a jet of blood right for her face.

  This time, Reggie’s control was expanded and his power grown. He focused part of his will on holding the liquid into one shape and keeping it from dispersing so that it hit less like a splash of fluid and more like a thrown brick. Thrown by a trebuchet, perhaps. Or a cannon.

  It hit hard enough to take a Worker’s head off, and even the elf didn’t take that impact well. She recovered fast, though. Definitely Tougher than Erindor, and faster too as Reggie found a moment later. Her sword moved with all the grace of a familiar weapon in skillful hands, barely caught by his outheld talons and smashed to one side. She brought it back around too quickly for him to defeat a second swing, letting his one run down his arm and scrape the skin right open.

  Not a lot of blood, but the magic in her blade hurt him like acid dribbled onto the cut and Reggie’s vision faded into a bloody fog. He didn’t remember pouncing, coming to only when he’d bowled the elf over and started digging his talons into her neck.

  He barely heard her ally coming up behind him in time to move.

  The elf’s magic sword—why the fuck didn’t Reggie steal Erindor’s—scraped another gash across his shoulder blade, then both the Circumscribers were up and advancing. Reggie could see their plan, they hoped to chop the head off Norvhan’s vampire problem by…chopping off his head.

  And two-on-one, they might manage it. Fortunately Reginald Smith had learned the merits of fighting unfairly a long time ago, and with a mental command he sent half a dozen soldier ants scrambling across the town to reach his enemies. He waited until the ants were close, then screamed and started stumbling forwards.

  Of course, the elves were unfazed. Probably thought he was desperate and panicking. Neither of them thought, until it was too late, that he was just obfuscating the sound of his minions approaching. By then the ants were already piling onto the other elf, leaving Oleri to Reggie.

  Soldier ants, not praetorians. Reggie couldn’t control the praetorians, which was why his plan for them had consisted of just chucking them into the town and letting them go mental.

  But six soldier ants ambushing one Circumscriber were still plenty problematic for the elf’s wellbeing. More importantly, they took his focus off Reggie and left him free to attack Oleri.

  She recovered fast, keeping her attention on Reggie as he prowled closer, snarling and hissing without really meaning to. His lips curled back to expose jagged teeth, and he found himself listening to the sound of her heart thundering away. She was scared. A Circumscriber fighting little old Reggie, and she was scared.

  Good.

  He picked his moment and lunged in a great explosion of strength and speed, then snapped back to avoid her retaliatory swing. This time Reggie slashed out as her arm passed him and caught the wrist with his talons, cutting deep.

  Reggie grinned as the elf fell back from him. She worked to widen the space, and he let her. Instead of following he just threw his thoughts out, wrapped them around that wound in her arm and started pulling.

  Slowly, working against the opposition of her body’s natural mana, he pried out a trickle of vitae. Her eyes widened as she realised just what was happening. It had all started with one cut.

  And now the Circumscriber was working against time.